Wednesday, July 12, 2006, 09:17 PM
Today was the "Perfect Storm" of bad days. First, Wednesdays are really busy anyway. On top of that, today had one of the pointless staff meetings, so that ate up an hour of extremely valuable time. We're also running the investigation team with just two people (instead of four) because one person quit and another person has been on extended sick leave for 40 days straight.
Well, my boss has been outsourcing a *small* percentage of the investigations over to the Case Agent staff. Well... You've never heard such whining and groaning! Forget the fact that the average case agen is reading the paper or playing solitare by 1:30pm. My personal case load has gone from 5 cases per day to 7. Six cases per day is really the upper limit for what is reasonably doable in an 8-hour shift.
One of the Case Agents had the nerve to say, "The investigators should be able to do 9 or 10 cases in a day. Seven is nothing." Geeeeeeez!
So I got out 90 minutes late today because I had too many damn cases. Three of the defendants came in after 3:00pm, which means that I had to process them instead of writing case notes. And these useless junkies had the nerve to complain that it was taking too long! Ha ha ha ha!
Oh well... What can ya do?
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( 3 / 1082 )Sunday, July 9, 2006, 10:47 AM
Doug comes back from his vacation to Erie, PA today (I usually think of it as Eerie, PA). Doug gets a lot more vacation than I do, so he visits his mom twice per year. I think that's nice even though I am sorta lonely for a week. But he's coming back tonight. Yay!
The T-Mobile Sidekick turns out to have been a great Valentines Day gift this year, since it's the first cell phone that he's actually enjoyed using. He sent me a bunch of pictures of his mom's dog, Daisy (who also goes by the nicknames "Big Bite" and "Meat Loaf"). The dog is a chubby dauxhund (one of those "hot dog" shaped dogs).
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( 3 / 992 )Saturday, July 8, 2006, 03:57 PM - Drrruuggsss
Y'know... It's just really hard to feel sorry for junkies. I see them all the time in my job, and the big problem I have with them is that they are RARELY interested in getting off dope. It doesn't seem to matter that their drug habit has driven them to a life of crime, made them unemployable, wrecked their health, and alienated them from their families. All they care about is smoking their next rock or shooting an ampule of boiling heroin into their veins.
I had a defendant stagger in yesterday who was so high that I thought he came in on a parachute. He was 29 and looked like he was 70. He weighed 130, had AIDS and HEP-C from using dirty needles, had never held down a job, had a 200 page RAP sheet, was on disability, and could barely keep his eyes open because he was so saturated with heroin.
The hillarious thing is that he is in a drug treatment program too! He does heroin IN ADDITION TO methadone. So my tax dollars go towards making sure this useless junkie gets extra dope, free AIDS medicine, free housing, and free food. His latest offense? He stole his grandfather's credit card and used it to get cash advances so that he could buy more dope.
The guy's criminal history showed that he just doesn't care abnout anything except dope. Every time he got arrested, it would follow the same pattern: 1. Arrest for some petty offense (dope, theft, burglary, trespassing, etc). 2. Failure to for court. 3. Re-Arrest on that charge. 4. Released on bail (as opposed to recog). 5. Failure to appear. 6. Re-Arrest on that charge. 7. Held without bond until trial. 8. At trial, some liberal judge would give him a verdict of "time served". 9. Out on the street -- REPEAT!
This jerk was at Step 4 yesterday.
Personally, I wish that junkies could just be "put to sleep" like diseased animals.
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( 3 / 2251 )Wednesday, July 5, 2006, 09:17 PM
I get this sort of degenerate form of migraine headache once in a while. Basically, I get all of the migraine components except for the pain. My vision fills with greenish fire, I get dizzy, sweaty, and generally uncomfortable. These episodes last only 10-15 minutes, but they are a real drag.
It's really annoying when it happens during a workout. I only got to run 2.25 miles today. I usually like to run 3.0-4.5 miles in a session. Oh well.
I sometimes worry about this happen when I'm driving. Thus far it hasn't hapened that way. But man, is it a drag!
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( 3 / 1062 )Tuesday, July 4, 2006, 05:10 PM
Doug's away visiting his family for a week. I have the day off, but it's been pretty dull. I did my usual workout, then I cleaned the downstairs, did the dishes, and ran the laundry. Whooo-hooo!
My relatives in Baltimore never invite me over for holidays. My mom and brother live too far away to drive there and back in one day. Most of my friends have, over the years, moved out of state. Oh well. I'm feeling kinda lonely and bored.
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( 2.9 / 1078 )Tuesday, July 4, 2006, 09:27 AM
I had a really odd dream last night:
There was a world that was mostly arid and hot. It was run by a rigid caste system where certain people enjoyed great power and freedom while others were little more than slaves. There was a shopping mall where I was trying to find my sister. I remember being able to understand what the various signs meant even though none of them were written in English.
The shopping center was absolutely crawling with rats of all sizes and colors. They weren't one bit afraid of people. But I sure was afraid of the rats! All of the stores were dingy and filthy.
One of the stores was a pharmacy, and a security guard threw me out because I walked in through a door reserved for someone of higher caste.
There was a clothing store in which the floors were caked with rat droppings. I noticed that there must have been another sentient species that lived in this world, for the store had a clothing section for people who had to have been very slender but also be 12'-15' tall! I didn't see any of these people, but they must have existed. It also explained why the ceiling was 20' high.
I had to fight off three rats that tried to bite me. One of the salesmen said to "not worry about it, that EVERYONE gets bitten once on a while". Well, I'm not just everyone!
I found my sister in the back of the store. She looked dirty, too thin, and had the look of someone who had been worked too hard for too long. When she saw me, she had this strange expression that told me that she hadn't seen me in a long, long time. (Where had I been, I wondered?)
I led her out of the store.
I looked out into this filthy strip-mall that sat in this filthy town which lay on this filthy, hateful world, and decided that I wanted to leave.
Suddenly, everything became foggy and indistinct. I grabbed my sister's hand and started walking. I knew, somehow, that I was walking *away* from this place, this world. I had the power to walk between worlds by calling down mist and walking in a certain direction in a certain way.
We left the rat-infested hell-hole world behind. And for a minute, there was only white mist around us. But then, I saw the shores of another world ahead. As I entered it, I knew a few things about it: the apex predator was the wolf (not the rat); the most common rodent was the gerbil; it had a wider variety of insects than the previous world; the world had a large number of shallow inland seas; the climate was a heck of a lot more temperate.
I (and my sister) emerged from the mist on the shores of an inland sea. It appeared to be a fishing village dotted with simple wooden homes. It was not schorching hot and there was plenty of water to drink. More importantly, I instinctively knew that my sister would be welcome here, taught a trade, and have a happy life.
So why wasn't I staying? I did not know. But I felt a calling to *walk* somewhere else to help someone else. I guess that was *my* job.
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( 3 / 1040 )Sunday, July 2, 2006, 06:37 PM
Well... After six months of Doug dieting and me excercising, here's what we've accomplished:
-- Me: 25 pounds.
-- Doug: 30 pounds.
I am really proud of Doug. He was able to keep up with me the whole time in New York this weekend (and I really walk fast!) He can buy off-the-rack clothes now, instead of having to buy clothes out of a catalog. He doesn't get tired all the time anymore either. Doug is just doing SO WELL!
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( 3 / 1098 )Friday, June 30, 2006, 09:05 PM
I had a pretty creepy defendant roll through Pretrial today. He was accused of murder (1st degree / premeditated). Apparently there was some guy he had an argument with previously and he responded by coming by later when the victim was parking his car. The defendant pointed a shotgun through the car window and pulled the trigger.
The victim was completely obliterated! You could bury him in a shoe box. Ugh!
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( 3 / 852 )Sunday, June 25, 2006, 02:49 PM
I've been really happy over the fact that the Bishop picked a really nice, highly talented interrem rector to serve at St John's church for the past 19 months. But today was his last day. I was genuinely sad to see him go.
With a name like Bruce McPherson, one might guess that he was highly Scottish. He had both a Scott's humor *and* temper. For better or worse, it was never *boring* having him around!
Unlike the wretched man he replaced, Bruch was genuinely likable and really seemed to be a man of God. I wish him well.
To tell you what a breath of fresh air he was, you have to understand how bad his predecessor was. Reverend Shifflett (aka "RevDocBS" since he always used both the Reverend and Doctor titles.)
RevDocBS was a spendthrift with other peoples' money (evidenced by building a huge, money-losing private school on church grounds). He loathed the poor. He wrote lousy, long, rambling sermons that never really seemed to be about anything. He never gave the music program a proper budget. He and the Choir Master had an enmity that lasted nearly 20 years. I remember vividly how he actually slammed his office door in my face once. He chewed up secretarial staff like nobody's busines because he was such an evil, hateful man.
Bruce McPherson on the other hand is kind, engaging, and certainly never one to slam doors in people's faces. He and the Choir Master got along well. He also had an appreciation for music, poetry, and fine literature. He liked Robert Frost and JRR Tolkien. He wrote engaging, memorable sermons. In the past 19 months, I'd estimate that church attendance went from 40% to around 70%. I know that *I've* been attending church more!
I hope our permenant rector is more like Bruce and not at all like RevDocBS.
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( 3 / 1082 )Friday, June 23, 2006, 09:01 PM
I had this odd dream about a one-eyed submarine captain. The odd thing is that he didn't have an eye patch or anything like that. He had just the one eye -- in the middle of his forehead. He was a cyclopse.
Now, just because he was a cyclopse didn't mean he was a bad guy. He wasn't. He used to have two eyes as well, but some sort of undersea monster somehow stole one of his eyes.
He commanded a really fascenating submarine. It was some kind of experimental model, one of a kind. It looked vaguely like a gigantic pepper mill. Along the outer hull, a sort of revolving luminescent cable swung around it, like a barber pole stripe. It propelled the sub by creating an electromagnetic effect that pushed the sub. This was a nearly silent propulsion system.
Inside the submarine, the cyclopse captain announced that the ship was going to try to find the creature that stole one of his eyes. The ship entered "silent running" mode, which made most of the interior lighring flicker out. I assumed that the intense electromagnetic effect from the experimental drive also made the lights malfunction.
The ship dove to some incredible depth. Perhaps it was in one of the deep trenches (like the Marianis Trench).
The water around the submarine was perfectly clear, yet black as night. Even though I don't really have a sense of touch when I dream, o intellectually knew that the water was very pure but also very cold.
The submarine had a remote sensor it used to scout ahead. It found the creature. It looked like a gigantic venus flytrap that had a huge single eye (presumably the captain's). Unfortunately, the eye had grown proportionally with the plant. So I had no idea how the submarine caprain would ever use that eye again. His missing eye was as large as the captain's entire head!
I don't know what happened next, since I woke up.
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