After Christmas

As an undate, the gift from my inlaws were towels. We each got a bar of scented soap, a large towel, a hand towel, and a washrag. On the plus size they are very soft over-sized towels from J. C. Penney. Mine are green and the wife's are purple. My middle sister-in-law got us each an ornament for the tree we almost never put up. I didn't get sick until after Christmas this year. That's a mixed blessing. I hope I can shake the head cold enough to party at least a little this New Year's Eve.

Liquor.

I am not a big drinker. I don't really like beer. Wine coolers are okay. Smirnoff Ice and Bicardi Breezers are very acceptable. Wine doesn't really do it for me either. Liquor on the other hand. I like some mixed drinks. Rum, Ameretto, and Vodka are my mainstays. I am not that sofisticated of a drunk. Make it sweet and I will probably like it. My old favorites were Pina Colodas, Dakaris, and Sex on the Beach. Later I graduated to Wiskey Sours and Tom Collins. Then my wife intoduced me to Ameretto Sours, which I loved, and Long Island Iced Teas. I also have been fond of Peppermint Snapps. She introduced me to Goldshlager and Afterburner, both of which are cinnamon snapps. She prefers Goldshlager, which I think is a little hotter and stronger, but I preferred the sweeter flavor less hot Afterburner. I recently discovered Mohitos, a minty rum drink and my brother-in-law introduced me to Apple Martini's. These are currently my favorite drinks. I also occasionaly use rum or amaretto instead of vodka in the apple marini's. The rum gives it a little less bite than the vodka. The amaretto makes it a very sweet drink with little alcohol bite. Since the proof on all three liquors is identical, I guess this is perception rather than reality. My wife has taken up with tequilla, especially Jose Quervo. I have tried a fee shots and this stuff has a strong smoky flavor when done with salt and lemon.

Merry Christmas

This is a meandering catch-up post and a rant. Working for the state government is cool this time of year because we get lots of time off. Unfortunately we have exactly the same amount of work to do, just fewer days to do it in. If you count the days off plus the three, count 'em, three, days I've spent in court, I lost 7 full days this month. That's a lot of days to try to make up. Add to that, a few of the really stupid people I work with and it is really a hell of a month.

We had Christmas at my parents on Saturday, because my sister, her husband and the kids were up. Yesterday several people came by and gave us gifts. So far this Christmas bites. Half of her family don't give us squat. I know her oldest brother sent nothing, even though we got him a really nice gift. It's not that he can't afford it, he makes a hell of a lot more than we do and his job includes an apartment and free meals if he wants to eat on the estate. The younger brother is coming up next week and it sounds like he is bringing gifts. The older sister and the youngest didn't bring us anything. My parents gave me a pair of dockers, a sweater, and my wife a Walmart card. They also gave us a $100. My sister gave me 2 shirts and my wife 2 shirts. I picked up a $10 Cracker Barrel gift card and a business card holder at work. We haven't opened the gifts from her parents and the middle sister yet, but it looks like more clothes.

Now, I know I am sounding gift greedy, but the truth of the matter is we don't have a lot of money. I spent a big chunk of my last paycheck and my travel reimbursement check, and part of the $100 from my parents on gifts for these people. For the last 3 years, most of them haven't given us squat, but my wife insists on buying for them anyway. There are six members in my family to buy for. All of them give us something except for the 6 and 2 year old. There are 20 in her family. Of them maybe 5 give us gifts. Anyway, I have about $40 bucks to make it till Friday on so I have to be careful.

Anyhow, we ate Christmas Eve dinner out. Chinese. Nothing like Mongolian pork and Cream Cheese Wontons for Christmas dinner. Wifey is on the outs with her parents, so it is doubtful that we will be doing the Christmas dinner with them today. I am planning on roasting a chicken, doing sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, gravy, carrots and green beans. Maybe that will make her feel better.

New family editions: Okay here is a run down of the current zoo.

Saint Bernards -- Missy and Baker. Roxy passed away in October and I miss my girl.
Chickens -- About 30 mostly Polish, Cochin, and Silkies.
Goats -- Giselle and Angel
Bird -- Sweet Pea the Cockatiel
Snakes -- Leroy and Bertha the Ball Pythons
Cats -- Ninja, Noodlehead, Nana, Nella, and Ladybug, (Cooked Ear the stray Tom counts a half)
Rats -- Veronica, Jane, and Weevil, Plus 9 little buggers with hair and as of yesterday 11 little pink hairless additions. (Apparently we didn't get Weevil out in time and he rebred Jane. There were 16 in the first double litter, but only 9 survived.)
Pekingese -- China, Latest addition She is an older dog we adopted after her owner passed away.

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays whatever you celebrate, don't let the season drag you down, enjoy it.

Crap!!! In more ways than one.....

I didn't make it very far on my fast. I think around 32 hours. Around thirty hours I discovered what explosive, uncontrollable bowel movements are all about. Right in the middle of work. Best discription, very liquid and very bright yellow. I managed to sneak off for an early lunch, go home, and change clothes. Not dignified or fun. I should have researched a little more. If I'm going to do this thing, then I need to have at least a long weekend to get past this stage. I have been careful on what I've eaten since then sticking to salads and lots of water. Bowel movements are not yet back to normal, but I felt really, really good most of yesterday. Today, I woke up feeling like crap. I think I am running a low grade fever. Of course, we are having 3 hours of mandatory training this afternoon, so I am stuck and can't go home.

Happy Holidays, I want a sandwich

Okay, I hate this time of year. Christmas always stresses me and this year is just as bad as last year. Money is tight and my wife thinks she has to buy everyone in her huge family a gift. I have a mother, father, sister, brother-in-law, and 2 nieces. That's 6 people. Seven when you add my wife. She has a mother, father, 4 sisters, 2 brothers, 2 brother-in-laws, 3 nephews, 7 nieces, and me. That's 20 people. Now I realize that this isn't the Christmas spirit, but 4 of my six people will give us gifts. Based on the past, we might get gifts from her parents and her brothers. None of the sisters will get us a thing, they never do. Yet she thinks we have to buy them all something. She is only working 1 day a week, so my overstretched salary has to overstretch again. The only thing that got us through last year, was that my dad gave us money and we used it to buy gifts.

By the way, when did being fat constitute being disabled. You know those little motorized carts, some stores keep for disabled people to drive around in? I was in redneck heaven (Super Walmart) the other day and two unbelievable large people tried to run me down on those. It was a morbidly obese man and woman. Each of them was riding one of the carts, as I doubt that a single cart would have held them both. I am overweight, and not a small person anyway, but either of them was twice my size. Now there may have been something other than fat wrong with them, but there was no indication of such. My personal opinion is that if you are so fat you can't walk through the store to get your food, then maybe Someone is trying to tell you something.

Okay, I went nuts and decided to start something I probably can't finish. It's called the Master Cleansing Fast, or lemonade diet. I have felt like shit for quite a while and I am not having much luck losing weight, so I thought I would kickstart off my new weight loss program with a 10 day fast. Actually, I read up on this and it sounded reasonable, although I don't know if I can make it 10 days without food. Everyone claims that you don't get hungry, but I really like my food. Anyway as of now I have been on it for 5 hours and 2 minutes, my stomach is growling and my head feels weird. First time it has been without caffine in years I imagine. The idea is to detoxify the body, lose a little weight and gain a lot of energy. I will keep anyone reading this posted as to my progress or regress.

decisions

Well, I guess I need to write something, since, it's been almost a month, but I don't know what to say. Trying to get a job tutoring kids on the side. I found an add a month ago and emailed a resume. They sent an application and I filled it out and didn't hear anything else until last week when I got an email. I replied to the email and they wanted me to take a tutorial online and take some tests. Well, I did that this weekend, it took about an hour or so. I finished it with no problems and got another email saying I needed to fill out some more paperwork. I downloaded the pdf file and emailed it to work as I have no printer ink at the moment. They also said they needed proof of my college degree, so I brought a copy of my degree with me. There had been some mention of a background check, which is no big deal as my record consists of 2 speedding tickets 5 years apart and 10 years back. Well, when I read the contract agreement, I have to pay for the background check. I have to go through a particular company and it costs about $60 bucks. Now what this company does is sends the info to the TBI who does the actual check.

Now what sucks is that anyone can request a background check with the TBI. It costs $25.00. So this company is basically pocketing $35.00 to take a set of fingerprints. What really sucks is I could poke my head into the sheriff or police department and probably get one of them to print me and run the NCIC and fax the info to the company for FREE. I would owe an investigator a favor, or a bottle of booze, but not a $60.00 bottle of booze. For that matter, my prints are on file because I have a carry permit and worked for the IRS for a short time, and work for the state board of probation and parole. Each of these things resulted in a background check.

So I have to decide whether this part time job, which is subcontract with nothing held out for taxes, will generate enough income to justify the expense. It has the potential, it pays from $17.50 to 25.00 per hour. You get to say yes or no to clients, and the scheduling is flexible as long as you get the required hours in, usually from 12 to 16 hours per client monthly, so 2 clients could get me an extra $400 a month for a few hours work per week. Only I don't know how many clients are around here. There must be at least 1 or they wouldn't have emailed me.

TV

Okay this is a 2 part post. First off a bitch, then second off a plug.

This is part one. I live in a rural area and for the most part, I like it. Big cities are fun to visit occasionally, but I doubt I would like to live in one for long. Well, cable TV is not an option where I live. I would like digital cable, but they stop about a mile before our road and won't go any further at this time. As a result, I have dish network. Now the sucky thing about dish is that unless you get a receiver with tivo installed, you cannot tape one channel while watching another, so if you have 2 shows on at the same time, you are sunk. The way I have gotten around this for about the last 7 years is to pay extra for west coast feeds. In other words I get local networks and I also get networks from the west coast which run 3 hours later. So if I want to see both CSI and Grey's Anatomy I can watch one at 8:00 PM and the other I can watch or tape at 11:00 PM. Sweet huh. Well, it is now illegal. Apparently watching networks other than local networks leads to horrible crimes like sheep molestation and nun beating. Actually apparently it is illegal because cable providers apparently can't offer that service. I don't get it.

First, why can't a cable company offer the service. If I can pick up the signal, than the cable company can. They don't want to pay the cash to broadcast the extra networks, and they don't need to, because with cable I could watch CSI and tape Grey's with my old fashioned VCR. But cable won't provide me with service because they don't feel there would be enough new customers to justify running the cable down my road, even though there are 2 subdivision on the road and every single house, trailer, building has either a dish network or direct TV satelitte attached to it. This sucks. Now I either have to miss shows, pay for a tivo capable satelitte receiver, or install a second receiver in the bedroom and hook a vcr to it and pay for 2 receivers. All because cable is bitching about competition they wouldn't have if they played their cards right.

Next, why aren't you all watching Veronica Mars. Watch it. This Week. Right Now. Mark your calendar. Tomorrow. It is cool. Best show ever.

Just Ducky!!!!!

Okay, the powers-that-be are all excited because they just spent some taxpayer bucks and set up some video conferencing equipment so now we can have parole hearings hopefully without having to transport inmates much or spend money paying travel expenses for the officers. Now the kicker. For the most part, my office doesn't have that many parolees. We are a field office serving 15 counties. To use the equipment, the only rule so far is the officer must travel over 100 miles to get to the hearings. Now most of the prisons are over 100 miles from the office, so that sounds good. However, we didn't get any equipment, so if I set up a hearing, I would have to travel to an office that has the equipment, the nearest of which is about 100 miles away.

One of my fine Americans was picked up recently. He was a probationer who had disappeared 10 years ago. He was recently picked up by federal marshals. His wife and mother wander in wanting to know what is up. They claim they thought this was all taken care of. I point out that he had an 8 year suspended sentence from 1991. He moved without permission in 1994 and had not seen a probation officer since.
"Well, he wasn't really guilty, he was set up."
He pled guilty in court.
"But a friend gave him the money. He bought the cocaine for a friend."

Apparently it isn't a crime if you break the law for a friend.

"Wait Your Honor, you can't convict him of murder, a friend asked him to chop that man's head off."

"Oh, if a friend asked him to do it, it is alright."

"Officer, I wouldn't have raped that woman, but my best friend, Charlie, asked me to."

"You're free to go."

Sometimes life just sucks

Okay the week started good, but then kind of went downhill. First off, my wife sold some of her prize chickens. She got rid of 20, 14 of them just chicks, and was paid reasonably well for them, but the lady who wanted them lives on the other side of the state from us, so we ended up agreeing to meet them roughly half way. If you've never ridden in a compact Toyota car with 14 peeping chicks and 6 caged chickens taking regular craps on the cardboard you've put down just for that reason, on a cold day with the car heater going, you need to try it. Course we were paid and we needed the money, so I count this as good, except for the smell of roasting chicken turds of coarse.

On the way back we stopped at an outlet mall so my wife could spend part of the chicken money. Then we were stopped by traffic. About 30 miles from home a wreck on the interstate stopped traffic for over an hour. This is bad. After about 20 minutes we managed to get to a turn through and went home the back way. Autumn is in full swing and the trees are beautiful here, and this was a very scenic drive, even if longer and out-of-the-way. So I guess this is good.

Then she had to tell her father that we were going to be close so we had to stop and I had to remove some spyware from his computer. Should have hid for the rest of the week I think. Most definitely not good.

I found some sort of virus on my computer despite the 312 different anti-virus, anti-spyware, and firewalls I have installed.

Monday, I had court in a county so small and poor that the courthouse doesn't even have indoor bathrooms. The DA got his wires crossed on my case and instead of getting a new date and leaving at 11:00, I was stuck there until almost 3:00. On the way there, the bank calls and someone has attempted to charge over $100 onto my debit card. Fortunately my overdraft protection is not included on my debit card, so when the money runs out the card doesn't work, so only 1 purchase went through. Apparently from the virus I found. I was able to get a promise of a refund on the purchase of a webcam site membership, but if I ever find Mike with a g-mail account, look out. Anyway I cancelled the debit card and credit cards. New cards with new numbers will be issued but I won't get them until the middle of next week. I get paid by autodraft, so I never have any cash. Now I have no cards, and I am waiting for them to put money back into my bank account. This sucks.

Domestically Violent or Violent Domestically?

I hate domestic violence cases. First off they are never neat, always messy. They are almost never resolved, usually dropped, but if a probationer or parolee gets a domestic assault charge, I have to take a warrant. That means that in addition to the new charge they now have a violation warrant. But I have to do it, because the potential for violence is there and they could be a danger to someone, so I need to get them locked up. After all we would want to see the following on the news.

"Jerry Jerkov, convicted felon currently on probation, was arrested 3 times for domestic assault, before finally killing his girlfriend Nancy Nobrain, by repeatedly striking her on the head with an ironing board. Mr. Jerkov had displayed his fondness for blunt force trauma three times previously by assaulting Miss Nobrain with a waffle iron, a baseball bat, and a crowbar respectively." Mr. Jerkov was arrested all three times and Miss Nobrain arranged bail each time and refused to press charges. Each previous time a probation violation warrant was filed, but dropped when no charges were pressed. Why wasn't this violent offender behind bars? The probation office obviously isn't doing its job."

Quite frankly, the domestic violence charges are almost never followed through. The victim usually drops the charges and if that is the only basis for the violation, that warrant is usually dropped also. If the only violation listed on the warrant is a rule one, basically " I won't commit any crimes while on probation." Then the warrant will be hard to pursue. On the other hand, we now have a rule 14 about abusive, assaultive, intimidating behavior. If that rule is listed and the behavior can be proven, the warrant might stand.

I currently have 2 violation warrants out on new charges of domestic. I expect one to be dropped, but the other will go to trial. This genius picked up a charge for choking his girlfriend. He was granted a bond, but an order of protection was taken. Then my warrant got him, but for some reason, the judge placed a bond on it. Then the day before his probation violation hearing, he gets liquorred up and goes to where she is staying. Fakes being a police officer to get admission, then chases her up the stairs and chokes her again in front of witnesses. I get his bond revoked in court and get an ammended warrant on him.

Then I got to listen to another officer's case where the gentleman had decided to demonstrate true love by forcing his way through the door, hauling his woman up the stairs by her hair, slinging her onto the bed. The climbing on top of her and holding a knide to her throat while telling her he will take her out, then kill himself so they can be together forever. That's romantic!!

Windows Dead Messenger

My wife and I met on the internet. We lived in the same town, but did not know of one another. I saw her on a match up website, answered her ad. She replied and we emailed. Then IM, then telephone. Much of our early relationship could be traced to MSN messenger. I worked third shift as a computer operator, and she would often sit up and we would talk while I worked. It would have been long distance over the phone, but thanks to messenger we could talk a lot. Of course we had to type, but still.

Anyway, messenger has evolved and added many features since those olden days. Now I remember from my sales days, one of the methods of selling is called features and benefits. Basically you tell a customer one of your features, then explain what benefits that would give your customer. Well if you've been living under a rock until recently, an instant messenger is a program that connects your computer to a network service. You have an indentification with the service provider. When you log your computer into that network service, the service notifies everyone that has your identifier listed as a contact that you are online. It also tells you which of your contacts are currently signed in with the service. You can then instantly contact any of those people.

You can also use the messenger to transfer files to a contact. Some firewalls may balk at this though. This feature is probably the single most hated feature as far as corporate IT guys are concerned. This has proven an excellent virus spreading feature. On the other had, if you want to send multiple files, or larger files, it beats the heck out of email. I've transferred reports to coworkers, pictures to family and mp3's to friends this way.

Another feature that people like is the voice call, where you can use microphones to actually talk. You can also transmit webcams to whoever you are talking to. Now you can keep as many typing conversations going as you can keep straight, but you can only voice talk to one contact at a time. You can also only view and transmit one web cam at a time. Otherwise Netmeeting might be in danger.

Microsoft's latest version of messenger is called Windows Live Messenger. It has all the basic features plus a lot of cute new stuff, mostly minor but nice. It is also tied into some other projects that fall under the Windows Live banner, such as Live Spaces, ect. Unfortunately it is also fairly buggy. Last Tuesday, both my and my wife's messengers went out. They didn't give any errors, just refused to connect. Our older accounts still worked fine from the computer, but the current ones would not connect. After about 3 days, I finally found a site that had a link to reset the options in the registry which fixed it like a charm. Very aggravating in a product that is fairly nice otherwise. Apparently this affect not only our 2 computers, but a great many other as well as I was about the 50th person to thank the guy for the fix.

Bigger Equal Not as Good

Okay, what is with the current trend that bigger is always better. A long time ago, I became interested in creating web pages. This was a long time ago and things were much simpler. I search the mostly free internet on my V90 modem and then bought a book on HTML. My first couple of pages were done on notepad and were fairly simple. Later, my brother-in-law, who is a computer programmer by profession gave me an older copy of MS Frontpage and I found a simpler, although sometimes just as frustrating, way to do things. Now at that time there were not a lot of people around doing webstites, so I was able to pick up a little spare cash helping people with this. Anyway, I eventually bought an expensive suite of programs to make ever larger and more complicated interactive sites and although I seldom do a webpage anymore, even a personal one, I have kept the programs pretty up-to-date incase I ever want to.

Well the other day, two of the programs in the suite stopped working. The acted like they had never been completely installed, but I could not install or repair them. There was a little project I wanted to do with one program and after 3 days of fighting and cussing, I finally discovered that I had a conflict with another program and which program the conflict was with.

So I uninstalled both programs and reinstalled, and uninstalled and reinstalled and bashed my head against my desk and repeated, but it seemed that the two sets of software could not be on the computer at the same time and have both work, even though they were doing that exact thing last week. AAAAARRRRGGGGGHHHHHH!!!!!!!

To shorten it some, after adding about 6 million hits to Google I was able to find the 79 individual folders, well maybe only 52, that the programs installed in various places and with various names, on my pc and many of which the uninstall feature did not even touch, and manually delete them all. I also found that the conflicting program shared files with a completely unrelated program by the same company and of course that program had to go also.

I then reinstalled my suite of programs which worked. I then reinstalled my other program which also worked. Then I tested my suite of programs again and they still worked. The third program I just left off until I need it again. That was a lot of stupid work, I do not understand why it is necessary to spread components of applications all over my computer. And why change the names of the installation folders. Some file names were related to the applications, some named after the parent company, some named after the company that owns the application manufacturer. For all I know some of the folders are named after the thirdshift janitor's pet iguana.

Why is it now neccessary for a computer application to do everything in the world. We have operating systems with built in word processors, data base programs, spreadsheets, image editors, video editors, dvd burning software, animation software, and they even mow the lawn and cook supper. I remember when you had an operating system and then you had a different program for every function. For instance you had windows, navigator, word perfect, lotus 123, and d-base. Then internet explorer came out and fought with navigator. MS Word took on WordStar and WordPerfect. Eventually the programs would import other types of files, then sharing files. I remember when buying a "suite" of related programs was bad. You were supposed to use the best program for the job then fight to get the next program to work with the file. You might use lotus to organize your data then fight to get it into d-base. Eventually MS Office won because you could bounce the same file between all the applications without loosing a half day of work figuring out how to import and export in the proper format. It even included a personal organizer and email program.

Store are doing the same thing. I used to like Walmart. I could pick up toothpaste, a cd, a bag of dog food, underwear and a hammer in one stop. This was cool. It also made the hardware store,
clothing store, and music shop go belly up, but it made life easier for me. Then Walmart decided that people needed to buy more stuff from them so now they want me to buy my groceries, tires, mufflers, get family photos made, my dental work done, and buy my contacts there. It's now too big and a pain in the ass. You can't park in the lot during the day. You have to take a shuttle to the store to make it there and back on the same day, and the store is so big that first you need to rent a scooter to get through it and second, you can't find what you were looking for. They need a medium size army to staff the place, but they are only willing to pay a small size army so don't expect to actually find any help if you need it.

Judges

I haven't felt like blogging much lately, but an event yesterday ran a random thought through my brain and I am going to explore it just a little.

You see yesterday was inservice training for the month and I was trying to get actual work done on my breaks. One of the things I did was write a violation report and warrant and my boss signed off on it. I ran it to the judge's office on my lunch break so I could lodge it today. Well part of the warrant request states something along the lines of "before me, Joe Blow, Judge of the Criminal Court in and for X county, TN, personally came Jack Meoff, who, being first duly sworen, says that ........" Anyway, we don't usually see the judge and have always just signed the warrants and the judges sign them and let them go. If there is a question they usually call or send the report back with notes. Anyway, in the last couple of years, some of the judges have reconsiderred. With one judge we sign our stuff, but he calls us and swears us in over the telephone and then asks if each individual warrant request is true. Another, one of my judges who is no longer with us, started having us have the affidavit and warrant notorized before we submit it. The other judge found out and he started doing it. Well the new judge apparently wants to follow suite, and I forgot to have the secretary notorize it before I left. The judge was in the office, but his secretary would not take the unnotorized warrant in to him. Now the sole reason to notorize the note, is because we do not usually catch the judges in and it is a confirmation that it was the officer who signed the report swearing to the facts. If I was there in person and the judge was there, why would I need it notorized? I could swear to the report in person in his prescence as the affidavit states.

Anyway judges come in several flavors around here. City judges are elected or appointed. Their authority extends to strickly the city and they usually hear traffic court and city ordinace violations. They tend to be local attorneys.

General Sessions judges are elected by the county, their authority is county wide, but most decisions are valid statewide. They run the general sessions courts and here preliminary hearings and a lot of civil matters. They also often tend to be local lawyers, who maintain a local practice.

Circuit Court Judges are elected by the judicial district they preside over. They are state judges and are full-time judges with no private practice. They tend to either handle civil or criminal court, although if a criminal court judge is ill, a civil court judge may sit in for him. These are the judges I am dealing with.

Federal judges are appointed and hear federal matters. I have only had to deal with a federal judge twice and I like it like that.

A Tribute

We didn't meet Roxie until she was already about 2 years old. She was to become our third Saint Bernard. Our first Bernard was Missy. We took her into our home while she was about 3 months old. We raised her from a puppy and spoiled her rotten. Her official name is Mozart's Mysterious Mistress. We got her because friends had a male Saint and we intended to breed them, unfortunately the friends decided to divorce and our stud was going out the window. We ended up getting the dog, Beethoven's Baby Baker, or Baker. Since we wanted pups, it was going to be a while. Baker was about 14 months older than Missy, but we were told not to breed until the female was at least 2 years old. Now I had an old Rottie named Angel, who adored me beyond reason and who was my girl. She was old and developed some health issues. At 6 months, Missy was already larger than Angel. When Missy was a little over a year old and came into heat on November 1, Baker took matters into his own paws and went through a hole he shouldn't have fit through and bred Missy. This was litter of pups #1. Despite a vet tech attempting to give us the evil eye for allowing underage doggy sex to take place, everything went well, the pups were beautiful, and we placed them all. The money paid for our wedding and honeymoon.

We decided pups were lots of fun, but we didn't want to breed Missy too often, as that isn't good. So we thought we needed another female. As look would have it, we shortly received a phone call from the breeder Missy had come from. They were getting out of the Saint business, but knew of someone who had a grown female saint they wanted to get rid of. We went out and met our beautiful girl Roxie. Roxie was chained up and paid very little attention too. When she got loose she chased cattle and the owner was afraid she would be shot by a farmer. We made arrangements with the owner who had never registered her. We took possession and registered her complete with late charges.

Roxie was a half-sister to Missy. She was from an earlier litter and was 6 months older, but they shared the same father. Roxie was darker, larger, and had a more squared head. She was strong as an ox, but had no idea how to play. She couldn't fetch or play tug-of-war. All she could do was bounce on you. She was no were near as bright as Missy, but she didn't have the streak of mean in her either. Roxie was the sweetest dog in the world.

Well, her life changed. We were dog fanatics and our family went places. She went on walks, went to the creek and to the river. She went to parks, went camping, went swimming. She wore costumes for Halloween and got Christmas gifts. She went to visit family and go on picnics. She had two litters of pups and was an excellent mother.

On October 2, 2006 at 5 years of age, Mozart's Foxie Roxie departed from our family courtesy of a intentional overdose of anesthetic courtesy of a veterinarian. She had bone cancer and survived approximately 6 weeks after the first symptoms were noticed until my wife and I could no longer justify being selfish and keeping her with us. She was the sweetest dog in the world and god made her last few days on earth beautiful autumn days, for which I am grateful. Perhaps I am stupid, but the dog gave us unconditional love and affection and the last week with us, she could barely get around. She was a shadow of her wonderful self, in pain, and yet, never snapped, never complained, hardly whimpered. She bore her discomfort bravely and I hope she didn't suffer too much. We brought her in and spent a lot of time with her those last 3 days. She ate ham and hotdogs and other treats. She got to sun in private and the nieces and nephews came by to see her and say good bye. She got one last ride in a truck, which she enjoyed.

God provided again in that a man with a bobcat stopped by the vet while we were there and my mother-in-law spoke to him and he graciously agreed to help with the burial for what amounted to fuel money. The ride back was horrible and I remember only trying to drive and cry.

After words, neither of us felt like cooking so we went to get something to eat in town. We passed a billboard that quoted "Blessed are the meek, for they will surely inherit the earth." Then the stupid radio started in with that "Lips of an angel" song and I lost it. Up to that point, I had kept it pretty low key, but I couldn't any longer. The animals are our lives. They make up such a large part of it. I feel bad enough when one of the chickens die, but man, when it's one of the dogs or cats, it's like loosing a member of the family. Roxie isn't the first pet I lost, but it doesn't get any easier.

Ugh!

Well, week before last, it was decided that my gut was too big, and I needed to lose weight. The only diet I have ever had work was the Adkins diet. I spent about 6 months on it about 2 and 1/2 years ago and dropped 60 lbs. I lost it come the Christmas holidays and never geared back up to it, despite a couple of false starts. I have several weaknesses when it comes to food. I love sweet stuff, pasta, rice all personana-non-grata in low-carb land.

If you have never had to pleasure of low carb dieting, a couple of things you might want to know. There are several out there. Atkins, South Beach, The Zone, and Sugar Busters are the most popular, and they all start out about the same. The first two weeks, you eat almost no carbohydrates of any kind. You can have about 1 cup of green vegetables per day, otherwise it is mainly protein (meat) with some cheese thrown in to try to keep you from getting bored. Now you had better drink a ton of water for 2 reasons. Reason one is the diet is a diaretic and you'll piss your brains out and reason 2 is that if you don't pour the water in and take a mild laxative, you'll feel like you've crammed a beaver dam up your butt. You'll only shit once a week and feel like you're passing lead bricks.

Also, if you try this, read the book all the way through. One thing about the Adkins, day one is okay, day two isn't bad. Day three, four, and maybe five, you feel like crap. I can't describe it, you just feel bad, like early stages of flu maybe. You have no energy, you have a mild headache, you feel weak. Then all of a sudden you feel great. You get a rush that last several days and you start preaching the low-carb gospel. Then you kind of balance out.

Now, I don't know the medical validity of the diet. Some doctor's like it and some hate it. Mine likes the South Beach Diet. What I do know is, I loose weight on it, and if I can survive the first week, I will feel good. I had excellent blood work when I was on the Adkins too. Now if I can just stick to the diet and the treadmill.

Fake Penises -- Gosh!!!!!

Today I narrowly missed encountering a fake penis. It was taken off a parolee during a drug test. He was taken to jail. In this state, attempting to tamper with a drug screen while on parole or probation is a misdemeanor and can result in a jail sentence of up to 11 months 29 days. Not to mention being a violation of parole or probation which can result in even more or the above mentioned lock-up time. This is about the 4 th fake penis this year. I haven't found one yet, but I did find one gentleman with a condom full of urine stuffed down his pants. All that glamour and they still pay me, can you believe it?

The thing that was different about this fake penis was that it was home made. Yes, instead of spending his hard-earned money on a fake penis off the internet, this guy used what appeared to be pvc pipe, ice maker tubing, a turkey baster, gauze and the tip off of a sex toy. I hope it wasn't his wife or girl friend's only toy. With him locked up and her best alternative butchered, she might have to resort to finding one somewhere else.

Bachelorhood

Well, I am a temporary bachelor. My wife decided to respond to her younger brother's emotional crisis by going to New York to visit him. She left last night. The house felt empty and the bed even more so. I didn't sleep well. The cats also act different when she is gone. I won't get any piece when I get home from work either. They will demand attention non-stop from their one human. Work is driving my nuts. My people seem to have gone nuts. Never the most stable, once the weather warmed and they started stirring, they have misbehaved most horribly. Truthfully, it is only about 20% of my case load, the other 80% seem to be trying at least a little, but the 20 or so percent make over 60% of my work. With the wife gone, I might put in a couple of late nights at the office and try to catch the paperwork up.

Of course, I have to fix her computer. It's old and been giving her some issues, so we decided to update it. Of course, I figured on doing it while she's gone, but she insisted on starting it Saturday night. Of course the new motherboard was defective and wouldn't even post, but the place I bought it wasn't open on Sunday. I was in court all Monday. So I took it in today for them to test. It was defective and it looks like I will pick up another on the way home, yay me.

Stupid!!!!

People are stupid. That's got to be it. I have a guy on probation looking at a 4 year stretch. He has over 2 years done, and suddenly he starts creating some minor problems. I try to work through them and get him by without filing a violation report. Then, bam, he gets arrested for domestic assault. This requires an automatic violation report. The deputy makes a point of looking me up and asking for a warrant. This deputy is cool and laid back, so the guy must have some major issues. Well I file my report and warrant request, meanwhile, the guy bonds out. He starts in calling my cell phone and calls about 6 times that night, obviously blitzed, he gets me the next morning at work and wants to reschedule his meeting, so I do so. Then an hour later he starts calling again. He calls 4 more times, never remembering he has already called. I need to get up there and do a drug screen, but I don't have the time. I am blitzed at work. If the warrant is back tomorrow, I will hand deliver with a deputy and do a screen. The wonderful thing about probation in this state is no matter how much of it you do, if you screw up, the judge has the option of making you serve the whole thing.

Gripe, gripe, gripe

Okay, today I gripe about my wife.

Don't get me wrong, I love her to death. I don't know what I did that comes close to me deserving such a great woman, but there are a few things she does that piss me off.

For one thing, she has no concept of time or any ability to plan. I blame this on her family, because every single one of them is this way. It doesn't occur to her that if you have ten things to do that require 2 hours each, you can't do them all in 8 hours, especially if you spend 4 hours on the first thing, and wait an hour to start.

She also has a nasty habit of waiting to the last minute to do things. She knows I go to work everyday, and she knows what time I go to bed, but she will wait until 5 minutes before I go to bed, then want to start some project that will take 30-40 minutes to do. She also has a habit of announcing she is going to do something, then not doing it for awhile. An example, she says, "Let's go to Lowes." Thirty minutes later she is still on her computer. An hour later we go to Lowes.

Where ever she finishes with something, that's where she leaves it. She never cleans up after a job. If she vacuums the front room, the middle of the front room is where she leaves the vacuum. If she nails a board up on the barn, that's where you find the box of nails and the hammer. If she builds a dog house, all the unused boards, cut ends of boards, extension cords, tools, ect. that she needed or thought she needed will still be there. Where ever she takes off her clothes that is where they stay until she does laundery. If she takes her socks off sitting on the couch, her socks stay on the couch.

The thing that bothers me the most though is her lack of consideration. This hit me last night and pissed me off again. Neither of us have felt good, both fighting colds for at least 2 weeks. I haven't felt like cooking much, and she has griped about that, so yesterday I decided to cook supper. I had to work about 90 minutes over, and when I called she said she was going to the sale (every Tuesday night they have a farm auction locally) but she wouldn't be staying long. I got home around 6:30 PM. I fed the dogs, then started supper. I decided to do black beans and rice. My wife comes from Florida and loves the stuff. She introduced me to Cuban cooking on our honeymoon and I have embraced it whole-hearted. I used canned beans to speed things up and cooked on a lower heat to compensate some. I called her again around 7:00 to let her know I was cooking and she assured me she was almost ready to leave. At 7:50 PM I called to let her know we were almost ready to eat and she told me she was leaving the place. At 8:30 the beans started burning and I got mad and ate alone. At 9:15 she finally showed up. This is persistant behavior. There have been many times when she will be out with her father and he will take her to supper, and she won't even call to let me know. I cook a meal for 2 people, and try to keep it warm only to find out she has already ate. When I confront her with this I usually get a lame excuse, well there wasn't time to call. Not time between finding out your being fed, getting to the resturaunt, ordering your food, getting your food, eating, talking afterward, then driving home? How long does it take to dial a cell phone and say, don't cook for me, Dad is feeding me supper? It's not like I haven't cooked supper for her damn near every evening between 6 and 7 PM for the last 5 years.

Things Change

Sometimes, just sometimes mind you, I find myself thinking about how much my life has changed in the past 5 years. I've changed jobs 4 times. Keep in mind I'm nearing 40 and only had 12 jobs since I was 16 and 3 of those were at the same time, so roughly 14 jobs. I started in high school with a fast food joint for about 6 months, went on to a busboy job at a hell hole for 3 weeks, cashier at a stop-and-rob, then a shift manager at a truck stop for the same company. I stayed there over a year and got laid off. Next I went to work part time at a swimming pool construction company. I started off washing and painting pools and doing shovel and wheelbarrow work, then ended as general manager over 3 pool supply stores. I was there almost 11 years. When the company sold, I became an insurance agent for about 9 months, then managed a rent-to-own company for about 9 more until I couldn't take it and found a computer operator's job. That job lasted 6 years and ended a year after I met the lady that would be my wife. Next I taught math and computer skills at a medical technology school. I stayed about 18 months, it started good, but managment changed and it became a private hell. Then I went to work for a small company that manufactured bathtubs. I was supposed to be a manager and run things, but everytime I made a decision or tried to change things, the other employees would go over my head or just refuse to accept the changes. It was stupid. I was hired because I knew people and new how to figure the costs and the savings on things. I could have easily cut parts expenses by a third and improved delivery time, and had backup suppliers set up in 90 days, but I couldn't accomplish anything. That lasted about 2 months, then I went to work for the state. Oh, yeah while I was with the rent-to-ripoff people, I also delivered newspapers and babyset a store for a few hours a day.

Anyway, I guess getting married made me get ambitious and start trying to better myself. The nice thing about this job is it is stable, benefits are excellent, and truthfully, I would have to move to a more urban environment to make more money in the private sector and the hours would be killer. I've been at this for 2 and 1/2 years now and it's cool so far.

Other than growing ambitions, I have noticed other changes. First I always slept on the right side of the bed. She wanted the right side, so I got used to sleeping on the left side of the bed. Then she wanted the left side, so now I sleep on the right side of the bed again. WTF?

Formerly, if I wanted a big ticket item, I saved my money for it. I am not the most patient person, so I would become a hermit, no going out, no eating out, no buying anything not absolutely necessary, until I could buy whatever it was, usually a gun or a computer whatsis. Other items like books, movies, small ticket things, I would buy then do without whatever that money would have gone for until payday. It don't work that way now. A single man can live off peanut butter and noodle to buy the fancy video card or the new stainless steel .45. The married man can't seem to do that. Also, why does it cost 3 times as much for twice the people to live. I could see doubling food, detergent, soap, stuff like that, but man, the laundrey alone has at least tripled. And toilet paper, seriously, what do women do with the stuff, 4 little rolls would do me 2 weeks, now I buy 9 triple rolls and I'm lucky to get through the week.

I do the cooking, I was well-trained and I like to cook, most of the time. Sometimes I am tired though. When this happened before marriage, I would just eat cheese and crackers or something simple, unwind with internet or tv then go to bed. Now there has to be a meal. My wife can and sometimes does cook a little. She can make meatloaf, pancakes, and fried eggs, you don't want to push her much beyond that. It's usually safer if I do it. I like to cook and my mother and grandmother taught me how. My juijitsu sensei approved. He claimed that food was too important to be dependant on someone who would spend half her time mad at you anyway.

Also, when you marry, you gain a second family. This has benefits, but also expenses. My family lives near us and seldom asks for much and it is usually not that bad. Her family lives across the county from us and check previous posts for what they expect. Anyway, they reacted like Tasha hit the motherload when we married. Of course, I am bragging, but compared to what the other 2 sisters drag home, I understand. Older sis has been married twice now, and has 3 kids, none with the same father. He first was a lazy worthless bum, who is still a lazy worthless bum but now he draws a ssi check so his kid gets a monthly sum. She accused the second child's father of rape, because she was married to worthless when she got knocked up, but the baby was a little dark-of-complexion to be his. And hubby number 2 was much younger than her, and not old enough to even drink when she hooked up with him. He was pretty much lazy and worthless. His big ambition was to become a drug dealer only he would use up all the merchandise. His kid came out with the attention span of the average tweaker and doesn't seem to be all there, but she is young yet. She divourced him too. Periodicly she makes the rounds and gives them all another try. I think she likes keeping them on a line, in case she has a dry spell on men. Currently she has a semi-live-in boy toy and 2 guys on the side. They just found out about each other and the tire-slashing and window breaking has started.

Sister 2 has a hubby of less than a year. He is the baby daddy of both children. He had a job when they made baby 1, but lost it when the plant closed. He hasn't made any effort to find another one. I actually tried to help him get a job. He is content to do odd jobs and sell some pot on the side. It frustrates me. She seems happy though. It's strange, she was an a student, gymnastics and cheerleading, had scholarship offers out the wazoo, and she gets knocked up.
I guess her life probably is different now than she expected.

I now have stuff in the house I've never had before. Stuff live tampons, pads, makeup, conditioner, dainty underclothes, perfume, ect. I don't ask what some of the stuff is, as I am afraid of too much information.

My Space?

Okay, I don't get it. What the hell are you really supposed to do on My Space? Why is it supposed to be so damn much fun? I was a little slow getting to the internet. I was a little poor back then and working hard, so when I finally bought a pc and hit the information superhighway I was hooked. I've been an internet junky ever since, but I am slow to jump onto every new band wagon. I had heard of My Space a few times, but I wasn't interested in it. I actual first visited My Space because of work. A few of our clients with higher ich factors aren't allowed internet access by law. Someone reported a couple of Yahoo personal ads and a My Space account, so I started trying to see if any of my sex offenders were on either site. I haven't found any of mine yet, but these people tend to be very sneaky, and we did catch a couple on other caseloads.

Anyway, my wife went nuts again. This is how I refer to her new hobbies. Everytime she gets a hobbie, she dives in headfirst and thinks of nothing else until it starts boring her. This time it was chickens. We now raise chickens. This isn't a bad thing as I like eggs. However, it is probably cheaper to buy the eggs, than feed the chickens. Also, baby chickens are very cute, and since I grew up in the county, I like hearing the roosters. Anyway she joined several chicken raising groups, and there are a lot of kids on those groups and every single one of them had an account on My Space. So she had to have a page on My Space. I offered to let her have mine, after all I just wanted the signon to look for probation violations, but when she found out why I had it, she didn't want it. So she built a page, then she built another page, then she fancied up my page. This is funny. As near as I can tell, that's what you do. You try to make your page as outrageous and fancy as you can within the prebuilt limits and try to get people to visit it.

I started with the internet many moons ago. I built my first two websites using note pad and html code. Then I discover Frontpage and used it until Dreamweaver came my way. I've played a little with Javascript and Flash. I am no expert, but I have my feet wet. I like building sites, and I don't get My Space. You are very constricted in what you can do. Maybe that's the challenge, to work within and around the built-in limits.

If you haven't been, basically My Space was designed to let users customize a single webpage. You are encouraged to find and borrow or steal backgrounds, templates, music, videos, from different areas of My Space or related support sites and put them on your page. Animated GIF's are very big, they have a sort of weak blog area on every page. You can make this public or restrict it to your friends list. You can upload pictures and some video. Then you try to get people to put you on their friends list and/or request to be on yours. The main part of your page is your profile.

My Space was designed as a virtual meeting place for Teens, I think. It became popular with slightly older people and some other sites are targeting the preteen/teen set harder now. My Space gained a lot of publicity because of some pedofiles being caught on it. Maybe I'm too old, but I don't get it. For one thing, it doesn't work that well, or it doesn't for us. It often takes 3 or 4 tries to sign in, and when we get in, it is often very slow, or pages won't even load. All kinds of errors pop up often.

The internet has launched many phenomena. Ebay, Yahoo, Google, AOL are all good examples. AOL and Yahoo provide some services, but offer a community as well and have been very successful. Ebay and Google rely more on services although Google is try to branch out and Ebay does have some community type features. I have also seen some attempts fail miserably or do well for a while and fade after the luster of new is gone. Will My Space survive like Ebay or is it a fad? Will one of the imitators out there undercut it, or will something replace it? Second Life seems to be the next big grab for people's time and attention, but it costs money to really get going on Second Life and My Space is free.

It's a Conspiracy!!

Hiho Kermit the Frog here.

Well, somehow the in-laws-formerly-known-as-missing conned my wife into promising to go to an after-church cook-out. Not a good thing. I generally like my mother-in-law, however things have been strained since they returned. I think they realize I think the whole run off and be idiots for 3 months was stupid, childish and irresponsible.

Let me give you a quick cast of characters:

Mom-in-Law: generally a sweet and lovely woman, very religious in a weird end-of-the-world way, weird ideas, if you have a conspiracy theory to sell, she's buying.

Dad-in-Law: very enthusiastic, likes to be in charge, not a lot of follow through, not a long-term planner.

Sister-in-Law #1: Older than my wife, intelligent, slutty, self-centered, amoral, dishonest, manipulative. Wife calls her the Cow. Has conjured 3 demons that pose as children.

Sister-in-Law #2: Younger than my wife, intelligent, lazy, somewhat less slutty, self-centered, working on amoral, cute. Wife calls her Stuckup. Two sons, very young.

Sister-in-Law #3: Youngest child, spoiled, lazy, could be intelligent if she turned on her brain, wants to be slutty, too lazy to be amoral, whiny, self-centered. Wife calls her the Whiner.

Sister-in-Law #4: Not actually related, but adopted, a year older than the wife, sweet lady, hard worker, 4 well-behaved little girls as cute as buttons and 1 boy who isn't a pain to be around. (from a people hater like me, that is high praise.)

Brother-in-Law #1: Wife calls him Lazy Ass, he won't get a job. Married to Stuck Up. Drug dealer I suspect. I know his brothers are local thugs.

Annoying Asshole: Friend of family, I call him Fat Bastard. Annoys hell out of me, likes to stir stuff up and watch people fight. Tends to be sneaky. Probably a border-line pedafile. Has a thing for all the sisters.

I think that covers the whole crowd. I did not include the little ones, but stuck up had her 2 boys, cow had her three monsters who all ran around being disruptive with whiner's help, SIL4 had her 4 girls there, but they behaved themselves and were polite. Cow is sucking up to her parents for some reason and has been all summer. She has problems. Boyfriend number one just found out that she is seeing old boyfriend who just got out of prison and a guy who is friends with her ex-husband #1. Redneck love rectangle, how trailer-park is that? Anyway she is watching a 911 video stream on the computer and gets her mother started on how our government demolished the world trade center from inside and faked the plane crashes and blamed it on terrorist. Now, I am aware that some people believe this. I am also aware that some people will believe anything. My problem with conspiracies are that I don't believe our bloated, corrupt, and greedy government is capable of organizing the conspiracy, much less the coverup. And if they were good enough to do it, then why would we even suspect it? And what would they really gain. I mean if they wanted an excuse to invade Iraq, they could have come up with a thousand less expensive ways to stir up the public. Plus, there wasn't any buildup to it. There should have been a noticable increase in anti-Iraq propaganda in the media and public sement. I don't remember any of that. Of course, I tend to disbelieve a large amount of what is in the media, especially tv news. I consider it more entertaining than informative. I also try to realize that what I get is an interpretation of events rather than an impartial collect of facts. Anyway, my MIL suscribes to EVERY conspiracy theory. She is convinced that George W. is going to gather up the Christians and put them in concentration camps. I never understood this one, but she belongs to some prophecy group that feeds off the fears of people and I think it came from them.

Conspiracies can be a lot of fun. They make good movies anyway, but I have trouble buying into them. My take on human nature is that it is pretty much every man for himself and "I want it now!" I don't see anyone being able to put together a group that would stick together and work toward a long-range goal unrelentingly. And face it, any conspiracy has to be big, high level, well-organized, well-planned, nimble, able to think on its feet and react quickly, decisive, ect. Does that sound like our government? Hell, the state government here can't get me a working cell phone.

Anyway, I don't discuss politics or religion with people very much. I don't like either subject and have unpopular views. This is a very conservative area, although they tend to vote for liberals, which is just screwed up. This is also a very fundamentalist church area. We have a lot of Southern Baptist, Church of Christ, ect. I tend to veiw fundamentalism as another form of extremism and extremist are usually dangerous in any form. I don't belittle anyone's beliefs and I think you are free to believe anything you want as long as your beliefs don't interfere with my freedoms or present a danger to me or mine. I expect the same courtesy from you.

I try to be polite, listen to peoples views, and then decide whether or not to dismiss them. Sometimes I learn something, mostly I don't. I don't get into shouting matches with people over whether our goverment blew up the Trade Center. I don't think they did personally, but I can't know for sure. I haven't seen any evidence they did. I have heard of some evidience that perhaps our intelligence services had warning that shit was coming down, but did nothing. The only reason that people will give me for doing it, is that it gave the US an excuse to invade Iraq so we could take over the oil production. Well, that's gone well. Everytime I pull up to the pump to put in some of the cheap, cheap gas, I think, "Damn, I'm glad we invaded Iraq. " Shit, Iraq is a poor choice if you want oil.

I am probably more conservative than liberal, but my politics tends to vary according to the individual issue. I don't completely agree with any party. I believe that a lot of things are way more complicated than the average person can understand and that our information on things is incomplete. I also believe that there is a right and a wrong, and if you have to convince yourself something is right, then it is probably wrong.

Not Good

This is just a short post. Things are not well. First, neither my wife nor I can shake these stupid colds. We get better, but we can't get over them. Second, my dog is dying. Apparently the sudden onset limp is the result of a big tumor on her upper leg. She has cancer and the vet doubts she will make it to Christmas. Saint Bernard's don't have a long life span. Few of the giant breeds do. If they make it 10 years, it is considerred good. She is 5 1/2 years old. Doesn't seem fair. To make it worse, she is the only one of the three dogs that is mine and that really loves me. I feel like shit. Some time in the near future, I am going to have to decide if she is in pain and if the quality of her life is such that it is time to put her down. I've had to make the decision a couple of times before, but it was always in a case where the animal was old (my rottie Angel) and very sick, or where I found an injured animal that was obviously in distress and not going to get better and I didn't know them. This seems different, but I can't push it off on anyone else, she is my dog. It sucks.

For the Hellavit.

Okay, I started out griping about about my inlaws, then about work. Now for a few stupid updates.

Inlaws are back from Kentucky. There horses did not win anything. They sold most of them and made about what they would have made in 6 weeks at their real jobs. My mother-in-law, who is generally the nicest mother-in-law a man could ask for, broke her arm. My wife and I were both pretty sick over the holiday weekend. My wife had some major stomach problems last week and I took her to the emergency room last Wednesday Morning. Naturally they found nothing unusual in the tests they run or the x-rays, so they pumped her full of morphine and sent her home. Anyway, I was getting a headcold. Of course, I gave it to her on top of the stomach issue. So we had a miserable weekend. To top it off, one of the dogs seems to have hurt her shoulder, either dislocated it or broke it. Saint Bernard, big dog, it will be a big vet bill. One of the cats is sick too. She just seems really off, not herself.

TV is starting back. I didn't use to watch anything on TV but Buffy the Vampire Slayer, South Park, and the History Channel. Then I got married and introduced to many shows. My wife won't miss Gilmore Girls for instance. (P.S. Don't tell my wife, but I may have a case of the hots for Laura Graham.) Anyway, we tape a lot of stuff and watch on weekends too. Haven't invested in Tivo yet. Anyway, House is starting back tonight. Got to love the cranky Doc. Hugh Laurie is the man!!! Loved him in Wooster and Jeeves and Blackadder. Never understood the Stewart Little thing though. Veronica Mars, watch it, period, no excuses. It is the hands down best show on the tube. Stuff Lost. It was crap last season and really started annoying me. Veronica Mars is well written, well acted, and well directed. Kristen Bell is cute as a button, and the rest of the cast is amazing. I have been hooked since the first episode. My wife loves Medium, Grey's Anatomy, Smallville, Supernatural, CSI, Numbers, ect. I like NCIS, I know it is kind of stupid, but I love me some Ziva and some Abby. Plus you have to admire any show where one of the main characters makes fun of the fact that he was once engaged to Jessica Alba. Bones is a good show, glad Angel is back working. Many of the Buffy people are back on TV. Spike is guesting on Smallville, Xander has his on sitcom starting up, Willow is on a sitcom that doesn't completely suck, Cordie is guesting on Veronica. I heard that James Marsters was offered the starring role in the SCI-FI channels series based on the Dresden Files books, but turned it down because he doesn't want to have to film in Toronto if it gets picked up.

Anyway, I'll probably end up watching way too much TV, especially when the weather gets cold. It's cooling off a lot lately, quicker than I expected. I like fall weather. I have a high internal thermostat, so I sweat a lot in hot weather and am really uncomfortable. Cold weather is easier on me, but I only like it in short segments. I find fall weather the most comfortable personally and Tennessee is beautiful in Autumn. Spring is my second favorite season.

Stupid People

I have problems with idiots. Given my job, I shouldn't be surprised and I usually find in entertaining, but occasionally I just want to repeatedly bang my head against my hard wooden desk until I blissfully slip into oblivion. Keep in mind please, that I have just came off of 4 days solid in court and have caught a really nasty cold, so my tolerance for morons may be a tad low.

I serve a very rural community and I had the good fortune to be trapped into 6 hours of court in one of the smaller counties we serve. The courthouse is very old and picturesque. It brings to mind seens of old men in overalls whittling and spitting tobacco on benches outside the courthouse. Mainly because there ARE old men spitting tobacco juice and whittling outside the old courthouse. Unfortunately the air conditioning in the courthouse doesn't work that well either. This adds to the effect of the vintage building. After spending most of a day waiting for my single case to be called, I heard something interesting during a plea bargain. The young man standing before the judge was up on charges of burglary and theft. Among the items listed as being stolen from a private residence was underwear. When I heard this, I turned to the probation officer who worked the county regularly and ask in a whisper, "Is there a large blackmarket demand for used underwear up here." Without missing a beat, she whispered back, "Depends on whether they are bikinis or boxers."

About 18 months ago I had a parolee who had been out about a year start giving me trouble. He was behind on his supervision fees and had started missing meetings with me. I cut him a little slack because he was working as a block mason's assistant and construction can have unpredictable hours. On a rainy afternoon, I finally caught up to him and we met in the city hall building. We sat down on a bench and I started chewing him out about missed meetings. He responded by apologizing and saying, "We've been working a lot of overtime, I don't have a license and it is just hard to make my meetings. We are working so much and working out of town a lot I just don't have the time." So then without any interuption I asked him why he hadn't caught up on his unpaid fees. Without a pause he said, "The weather is bad and we haven't been working very much, so I haven't had any money."

I recently did a sentencing report on a young lady who was part of a three-way drug sale. They three people all parked their vehicles in a drugstore parking lot. One individual went in and filled a pain medication perscription, came out and divided up the pills and accepted money for them in the parking lot in clear view of the police officer writing a ticket on the other side of a road.

Another court case involved a man charged with felony reckless endangerment, speeding, reckless driving, possession of a controlled substance for resale, possession of a controlled substance for delivery, carrying a concealed weapon, theft over $10,000. Seems he was heading down the interstate around 90 mph with the lights flashing and blowing the car horn, weaving in and out of traffic. When the traffic stop was made, the subject was behaving suspiciously, so the troopers ran the tag. The car was stolen. When the suspect was arrested and searched, he was found to be in possession of a handgun and large sum of cash. The car was search and a large quantity of methamphetamine, packaged for resale was found. A similar case was in the paper recently. The man was brought to police attention because he drove off without paying for $25 worth of gas. Why would anyone with a car load of drugs risk attracking attention to themselves in such stupid ways. I have at least three people on my caseload for drug crimes, who were caught because they were speeding. One college kid was picked up with over 5 pounds of marijuana, 15 pills of x and some cocaine because it rolled out from under the seat of his car when he pulled over to get a speeding ticket.

A woman formerly on my caseload picked up new charges of possession when she was caught shooting up in a motel. The deskclerk called the police because her boyfriend was wandering around the parking lot naked, babbling incoherently. When the police took him back to the room to get clothes, they caught her with a syringe in her leg.

A college kid was on my caseload. He got into some drug problems in another state. Apparently he started his on business supplying the local fraternities with not-even-remotely-legal substances for their parties. He moved back to this state to live with his parents, enrolled in a local school and fired his business back up. He didn't use the stuff himself. What he did was slip to a nearby city Friday evening and bring back enough stuff to supply his people for a couple of weeks. Since the trips weren't regular, they didn't trigger any warnings. Then one weekend he and his supplier decided to hit the town a little before he came back. Only his source had an open warrant and was recognised by a local law officer. When the stop was made, my guys id was ran. Since he was an out-of-state case, the tbi was notified of his residence in this state and the fact that he was on probation. This meant he would be searched without benefit of a search warrant. They found a pound of marijuana, 10 tabs of x, .3 grams of cocaine, 4 oxyconten tablets, a set of digital scales, $5000 in cash, and some other paraphernalia.

Then there is the bug zapper effect. A bug zapper works by presenting a pretty light that attracts the bugs, then electrocutes them when they get to close. For idiots on probation, Wal-mart is there. I don't have any idea how many of my people manage to get into trouble in the local Walmarts. There was the lady on probation for forgery who was arrested for shoplifting a $3.00 belly-button ring. Then there was the drug case caught trying to return a computer she never bought in the first place, then the out-of-state drug case caught shoplifting makeup or the diversion case for drugs who was picked up for pi and shoplifting bananas.

Then in court we have the sweet-young-thing who's ex-boyfriend calls her and tells her he is going to bash in her car windows. The next morning on side window and a rear window on her car are broken in. The car actually belongs to her mother who reports it. When this reaches court, the mother provides only hearsay evidence, so Miss TrailerPark 2006, in her 2 sizes too small belly shirt and spray on jeans gets on the stand and after much prying by the da, finally admits that she had a relationship with the accused, he did call her and treaten to do the damage and he did call and apologize for it. She would not say whether she believed he did it though. Despite repeated questions, she would not state an opinion as to whether he committed the vandalism. It finally came out the he sent her a dozen roses 2 days after the event though. I'm sure that made up for the $250 repair bill her mother paid.

Then of course the out-of-state girl I mentioned earlier. The makeup girl. This was an out-of-state diversion case. A diversion is a special type of probation where the probationer can expunge there record if they successfully complete probation. No felony conviction, no lost rights, clean record like nothing happening. You can only qualify for it once. She comes down here with a 2 year sentence. She's 21 and a cute little thing, long, dark hair, big brown eyes. Skinny little thing with skin tight jeans and perfect makeup. She was working 3rd shift in a truck stop as a cashier. First thing she does is get caught shoplifting makeup from a Wal-mart. That isn't enough to justify extradition, so I am told to keep monitoring her. Then I have to come into work on a Saturday morning and track her down to make her return a car she "borrowed" from a 50 year-old truck driver she met at work. She claims he loaned it to her, he says she found out where he hid the spare key and took it. I figure he loaned her the car expectign to be "repaid". When he didn't get any he found out about me and called threatening to have her picked up for theft. Then she is arrested for domestic assault. She attacked an ex-boyfriend in the parking lot of Cotton-eyed Joes. I questioned her about why she was at the nightclub, but could never prove she went into it. She was put on misdemeanor probation for that one. Last but not least, she got the crap beaten out of her by a thug when she wouldn't put out after he gave her a ride home. I had lectured her about flirting with the wrong people, but it didn't do any good. She played on her looks a lot, but she looked pretty rough after that one. It didn't do me a lot of good, when she found out I had to get my warrant from another state on her, she did the bare minimum to meet her requirements. She finally found a sugar daddy to pay her bills. I noticed the other day, she was working her way through general session court on new charges, so I will probably see her back soon.

Lastly, I had another cute girl who attracted trouble on probation. This one was on for trying to slip contriband into the local jail for her husband. She peeled seals off the tops of some chocolate milk bottles, emptied them and filled them back up with Kahlua Mud Slide, reglued the seals and put the tops back on. She just wasn't quite careful enough, and a corrections officer noticed the glue job. Anyway, she and hubbie parted ways, only they made a tape at some point. She goes over to his parents house to pay them back for some school books they bought her and find ex-hubbie showing their sex tape to his buddies. She goes berserk and wipes out a vcr, video camera, computer, printer and does some colateral damage to her co-star. She managed to destroy the only tape, so I never got to review the evidence, sigh. She got out of that, but later developed a taste for the ganja and a local bar. These are no-no's on probation. She just got placed on house arrest and moved to a half-way house.

We picked up a new trick with our female offenders. The local judges like pictures on the warrants we submit. If the offenders pick up new charges, instead of our id photos, we have started using the booking photos. This way we can show our local beauty queens what kind of impression they make after a night on the town.

Court

I lost most of last week at work. That sounds weird, especially because I did not miss a day of work, but I was in court. I am a probation and parole officer. In this state parole and probation are combined into one board. Other states may have the functions separate. In case anyone has ever wondered, probation is an alternative form of corrections. Instead of locking someone up, you monitor them and place restrictions on them, but leave them in the community and hope they are productive citizens. Parole is a similar thing, but it is available only after someone has served time in prison and convinced the parole board that they are ready to return to society. I have about 100 people on my caseload. Only about 15 are parole, most are some form of probation. There are many forms of probation and several different types of probation officers. There are 7 types of probation officers in my area. There are 3 types of misdemeanor probation officers: juvenile, general sessions, and criminal. Misdemeanor crime is handled by the county, or an agency appointed by the county and agreed to by the judge. There are 4 felony probation officer types: Federal, house arrest handled by an agency under the provision of the Board of Probation, felony handled by the board of probation and parole, and juvenile handled by a branch of the Children Services Agency. I am a felony probation officer.

You can divide most court systems into 2 parts, civil and criminal. I deal of course with the criminal side. This is also split in two. The General Sessions court is run by the county and handles most of the misdemeanor stuff. It is also where preliminary hearings come from. It is where 90% of all criminal cases come from. There are other ways to get cases to the grand jury, but it gets complicated. The other part of the system is the state part, criminal court. All felony cases end up in criminal court as well as some misdemeanors. Incidently, all crimes are classified according to the maximum punishment allowed by law. If the punishment is no more than 11 months and 29 days in jail, then it is a misdemeanor. Anything with a year or more is a felony. In my district, the judges like the probation officers to be in court on new term days, readout days, negotiation deadline days and non-jury trial days. These are the days we are most likely to pick up new cases. They are also usually the days are violation reports will be heard and we will be called to testify on any reports we might have done for the court. Anyway, Tuesday was a negotiation deadline day and I had to be in court all day. We didn't finish, so the judge called court for Wednesday, a day I had set up for field reports. I was in court most of Wednesday and had to phostphone the reporting to this week.

I only have regular court duties in my county, however there are two cases where I might have to go to court outside of my county. Suppose a resident of my county goes into another county and gets caught selling drugs or committing a burglary. When he is convicted in that county, if he gets probation, then he will be transferred to me. If I have to take him back to court later for any reason, it will be in the county of conviction. Also, if someone is convicted of a crime in another county, then moves to my county, their supervision will be transferred. Fortunately, in these rural counties, the Criminal Court Judge is a circuit judge. My 2 judges handle 7 counties so this accounts for 95 percent of my cases. It is when we get into another judicial district and I have to deal with strange judges, that I get nervous. No two judges do things the same way.

Anyway, court is usually interesting and I will try to relay some good stories later, since anything in court is an open record, I think I am safe. Unfortunately I have to be careful what I tell you about other aspects of work, because I deal with some confidential information. Anyway, I had 1 case before another county court and it wasn't heard until 5:00 PM Thurdsay, so I lost 3/5 th's of my week. Man am I behind. I have to go to yet another county court Monday for 1 case. Yippeee!!!

Anyway, so tips for surviving if you ever have to appear before a criminal court judge in the state of Tennessee:

1. Dress up, preferably in clean clothes. No shorts, no untucked t-shirts, no miniskirts, no belly shirts, no trailer-trash, disco queen, night club makeup.

2. No chewing gum.

3. No chewing tabacco.

4. No intoxication bevorages or mind-altering drugs before court, you might want your wits about you.

5. Please use the following appropriate phrases when addressing the judge, Your Honor, Sir or Ma'am, thank you and please.

6. Do not laugh, smile, smirk, act cocky, ect.

7. Do not act bored.

8. Remember, this person is going to control what happens to your butt for the next installment of your life, he deserves respect, attention, and you taking him seriously, or at least appearing to. If you piss him off, he does not have to accept any deal your lawyer and the da worked out. He is the ultimate earthly authority, there aren't too many places you can go to complain if he tosses your butt in the clink.

What a weekend!!!

What a weekend, and I don't mean that in a good way. To explain, I might want to mention that I am married, but I married relatively late in life and I robbed the cradle. My wife is 13 years younger than me. My wife and I are in most ways opposites. I grew up in a small town in Tennessee.I only left the state a handful of times. I am quite, a fairly private person, even this blog is a stretch for me. I like my privacy and my alone time. I have 1 sister. My favorite pasttimes are solo or done in very small groups. I have a lot of aquaintances, but only a few really good friends. My wife's family travelled a lot and she has lived all over the US. She has 3 sisters and 2 brothers, and a friend that her parents raised as a daughter. She is noisy and the life of the party. She hates being alone and loves large groups. She has tons of friends, but none are what I would consider a true friend.

Anyway, my wife's mother was a professional jockey. Her father trained thoroughbred racehorses. They moved from track to track most of her life, although they settled in various areas periodically then moved on. It was the sort of situation where the horses got fed whether the kids did or not. Her childhood sounds horrible and alien to me, but it's what she's known. Anyway her father lost his trainer's license over some business deal and they had to quit the track. They eventually all ended up down here with jobs as contract parts inspectors for factories. The hours are killer, but the pay is very good. They rent a 20+ acre farm and have a few horses, goats, chickens, cats and dogs. They followed their oldest daughter here. My wife refers to this woman as the cow. She is 2 years older than my wife. She has an excellent work ethic, but the morals of a psycho alley cat. More later when I astound the world with As The Trailer Park Turns. Anyway they brought my wife's two younger sisters and younger brother. The eldest child is a boy, he just turned 30. Then the cow, then wifeypoo, then a brother, 20, a sister, 18, and lastly a sister, 13. It gets really weird on birthdays. I will relate more later.

My wife followed them here a little later and a few months more and we met.

My wife's father is in charge of the family. My wife has spent her entire life trying to gain his attention and respect. She has always felt that she was less loved than her older siblings. As a result, she has always jumped when he said frog. She has always placed his wishes above all else, including me. This of course, has led to a few fights. It has also caused her to lose at least 1 job. Her father has no concern for anyone else's needs or feelings and doens't even seem to notice what he is doing to here. I tolerate a lot and try to be supportive, because someone has to be there to pick up the pieces when his unreasonable expectations and lack of appreciation take their inevitable toal. She will tear herself appart to try to get approval. Incidentally, there is no competition here. None, I repeat, none of the other kids are this way. They are the polar opposites and won't do anything except sponge off the parents. The two boys are out of the state with good jobs and mostly stay away. The youngest girl still lives at home, however the other 2 sisters both have families, sort of. My wife is actually the only dependable person in the group. As a result, her father loads her down with all sorts of junk to do. He even hired her for a few months, although he way underpaid her and they ended up fighting.
She way undercharged him for the hours also. If I bring home a folder to work on at night I get griped at. "Why are you doing that? You aren't getting paid for it!" But if her father called and she spent 2 hours on the phone and internet tracking stuff down, it was different.

Anyway, my father-in-law started worrying because his landlord wanted to sel l the farm. He tried to get the financing to buy it, but couldn't. I hooked him up with a mortgage broker who came up with a sweet deal. Low interest, low downpayment, and working the overtime they work working, they could afford double payment. They could have owned the place in under 10 years. They never followed through.

My wife spent countless hours on the phone and internet, and she tracked down and fixed the problem with my father-in-laws trainer's license. Now he had hooked up with some breeders and had been breaking and training some thoroughbreds for them. He was also housing some paso finos for almost enough money to pay the rent. Without his license, he could not take the horses to a track or enter them in a race. Now the excretment strikes the rotary cooling device.

We are in Tennessee, with no gambling allowed. Kentucky isn't really that far from here. A four hour drive will put you close to three horse racing tracks. They made several week-end track trips last summer and spent their vacation at a track. Last winter a run of bad luck strikes. My mother-in-law flies to Washington state to spend her birthday with her mother and brother, the three rarely get to spend time together. This costs $$$. Then she comes back and takes the youngest girl to Washington D.C. for a karate tournament. More $$$$. Then she gets thrown off a horse and hurts her leg. She can't work for 2 weeks. Then he gets sick and misses a week or more of work. They save no money. But suddenly this summer, they pack up 10 horses, the youngest girl, quit the job and go to the track. It was only supposed to be for 30 days. It has been almost 90. They left my wife with the farm to keep up. She was working a full-time 3rd shift job. I work a full-time 1st shift job. Now we have to drive all the way across the county everyday and work for a few hours. To make a long story less long, they have little money coming in, they are not home, they have little money saved.

My wife ended up quitting her job. We have had to buy food for the animals out of our pockets. We have to travel over there every day. He is behind in all his bills. We have managed to keep the power and water on, but for how long I don't know. The landlord has lost his job, so he wants to sell the place fast. Now he has raised the price. My mother-in-law was kicked by one of the horses and broke her arm. My wife is stressed to the gills. She can't believe they have gotten in this position and she blames herself. She sees them loosing everything. And they still won't come home. To make matters worse, my father-in-law just told my wife he might need her to come out to the track to help him since her mother was hurt. I had to hide the guns. She was running around screaming "His is trying to kill us all!!!!!"

I also tried to wear disposable contacts too long and got a nasty eye infection in my right eye.

Problems with Strays

I have a lot of problems with strays. I have a tendancy to want to pick up and help any stray animal that comes along. On the other hand my wife picks up stray people to help. She is a natural-born social worker and I've tried to get her to apply for a job with human services, so we could at least get some money out of this tendancy of hers, but she won't. I would help if my wife didn't pick the absolute bottom of the barrel, lost cause, take-em-out-to-the-woodshed-and-shoot-em, no hope cases to try to fix.

Case in point is the whiner. This is a lady she met on a former job. Put my wife in a room with 29 normal, well-adjusted people (is there such a creature?) and 1 psycho and guess who she'll make friends with. Anyway they started eating lunch together. Most of the time my wife bought lunch for them both as the woman never had any money. I don't know that she ever bought my wife lunch. She also had a habit of borrowing small amounts of money that I don't believe she ever paid back. Anyway this woman was divorced, surprise. She also had 2 children that her former husband had custody of. Now this is the Southern part of the US. We are conservative and non-progressive. It is still very rare for the man to get custody of the children in a divource if the wife is alive and unicarcerated. Anyway she whines and whines about how she never gets to see her kids and how they are getting so big and she is missing out on their lives and everything. This goes on for months at work and on line through IM, so my wife finally springs into action.

Using the knowledge she gained from listening to the whiner, my wife knew that the boy was on his elementary school basketball team and the girl was a cheerleader. My wife then did the following extremely complicated actions. 1. She called the elementary school where the kids were enrolled. (this required the use of a phone and phonebook). 2. She asked when the next home game was. 3. She wrote the information on a piece of paper. 4. She called and arranged to pick the woman up and take her to the game. (Note: none of this should have been beyond the capabilities of the Whiner to do on her own.)

Do you want to know what happened. When the day came to go to the game, the Whiner suddenly had to go to her mother's and could not make it to the game. I tried to explain to my wife that the woman didn't really want help or out of her situation, she just wanted people to feel sorry for her and let her skate along. I also tried to explain that if people won't help themselves, you can't help them. This was just one of several things she tried to do to help the woman, but for some reason the woman never followed through on anything. I know it hurt my soft-hearted wife a lot, which hurts me.

By the way, my home is currently being destroyed by this mother cat and her 8 extremely cute kittens I found playing in the road on my way home the other day, anyone need a pet?