My old job.

I could not got to sleep last night.  I tossed and turned and just turned on the light and grabbed a book I got where I used worked.  It is like a school yearbook, but it was for the police department, the 25th year book.  I used to work for the police department in Las Vegas.  The department had just become merged with the city and county, so we were called Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department.  I went to work there in 1973.  I went there, did an interview and took a typing test and was hired.  Now they have oral boards, tests, you have to jump through hoops to get hired, but back then, they didn’t do all that.  In fact, I had just washed my hair the day they called. I had long hair, almost to my waist.  The phone rang and I picked it up.  They wanted me to come in to work right then.  I said, “I have to dry my hair and I will be in.  I was working at a department store called Grants.  It was kind of like a K-Mart store.  I called them and said I got a new job and I quit.  They were jerks anyway.  I worked there for a year and I wanted a nickel raise and they would not give me one.  I think back on that and think , “Wow, they would not even spring for a nickel.”   Back then the minimum wage was $1.60 an hour.   I liked working for the police department.  I worked in the Records Bureau.  This was before you could type on computers.  We did have small computers just to run names and get their arrest records.  You had to type everything on type writers.  We would sit at a type writer and plug ear phones in our ears and listen to the recording made by police officers.  They would call  in and record the arrest report.  Then we would type it.  You had to listen and then back it up and listen and type what you heard.  If you made a mistake, whip out the white out and re-type it.  I am sure they probably still listen to the arrest reports, but now they can type it on a computer and just send it electronically over to the jail. 

I really liked working on the teletype machine.  You put this ribbon paper in it and then type it and as you typed it, it would punch holes in the paper.  Then you had to dial a number and run the paper that you typed into the machine and it printed out the teletype and sent it out too.  But if you did a type mistake, you had to start all over, which kind of sucked.  They don’t have to do that anymore either.    I found a picture of kind of what it looked like.

Ours was in the back of the building and it looked old.  It probably was old.   We didn’t have any guys typing in our department.  We also had to take citizen reports.  We rotated jobs, answering phones, doing the typing of the police reports, teletypes and waiting the counter and taking reports.  I didn’t like the typing police reports.  Those officers would send in people that were beat to a pulp.   You sat at this desk out in the lobby and type what people would tell you.  They would be all bleeding and getting blood all over the chair and desk.  I felt really bad for them, but I didn’t like looking at them either.  They should have went to the doctor.  I would try to hurry and do the report and tell them to go to the hospital.  They needed stitches. 

Then then got little rooms for us to sit in with the people, they were like closets with a tiny desk, a type writer, a chair for me and 2 chairs for the people.  I would call them and we went into the little room and shut the door and I would take their report.  I would have them tell me their story and I would type it word for word and hand it to them to sign and they would read it and say, “I didn’t say that, I want it typed again.”  I then had to start over.  I just started giving them a form and tell them to write what happened and then I would type it.  One lady got in a fight with her teenage daughter and wanted to file a battery report against her.  She pulled up her dress, which I didn’t want to see, because I just typed the report.  She had a giant bruise all over her side down her leg.  Her daughter beat the crap out of her.  I would send those people to get photos…..again, the police officer should have called out a photographer to photograph them. 

One guy came in and lit up a cigar in that little room.  I hate cigar smoke so I told him, “This room is too small and I can’t breath, put it out.”  He  got all huffy.  A lot of officers take reports out in the field, but they sent in a lot of people too.  It was very busy.  I worked in Records for a year or two and then I put in for a jobs doing Grants.  I got the job, so I was transferred to Research and Development.

To be continued.

Banana guy

I watched the Jay Leno show the other night.  He is so funny sometimes.  He was showing stuff he found at the dollar store.  He said “This is just wrong, see this banana guy.”  I have to agree with him.  It is this banana shaped thing with a strange face and arms and legs.  Let me show you.

See, it is strange isn’t it…………yeah, so I decided to go to the Dollar store today.  I am making a video with my son of his Lego Spongebob.  He poses the mini figures and takes the pictures and I do some of the voices and edit it and add sounds to it.  I wanted to look for something to make a squeaky sound to record for the walking sound.  I looked around all the toys in the dollar store.  I didn’t find anything squeaky.  There was this one tube thing that said squeeze me, so I did and all the yellow goo came out a hole in it and went all over my hand, it was gross.  I didn’t want to wipe it on my clothes and I didn’t have a tissue, so I wiped it on the carpet, which is gross too, but it was all slimy, all over my hand.  I did see a few cheesy items, so I got my camera out of my purse and took a couple of pictures. 

This is soft and squishy, I thought “Lady Gaga”  I could put that in my hair as a hair ornament and kind of look like Lady Gaga did with her hat that looked like it ate her.  See a few posts down for that one.  I decided not to buy it though, I didn’t think it was worth $1.

There was this big plastic ring called a diamond ring that had a button to push and when I did, it flashed on and off with a red light.  It was huge to be a ring, but it was too small to use as a bracelet.

I then found these tattoos, the kind you put on with water.  There were a lot of them.  They are  Bling tattoos. 

Maybe I should get that and put that dollar bling on my arm and the gold bracelet tattoo for Halloween. 

I do like bling and I liked this next item.  You can put that on cell phones to bling them up, all for just $1.  The more I look at it, the more I want it.  I just don’t have anywhere to put it. 

I know, I could put it on my change jar for the Coinstar.  I wonder if it bends.   I did end up buy a pack of paint brushes to paint a couple of pictures.  I got 10 art brushes for $1.  They have some neat Halloween decorations, I might go back for some.

WTF homework.

My son came home from school today and did his homework. He later went to bed and then got up and said he forgot to do Language homework. I hate that subject. I have been going over it with him but it is hard for me to pick out things in a sentence. I told him he could do it in the morning. Last year he made all A’s, and 1 B. This year, he is not doing good in language. He missed 6 days the very first two weeks, so that was not good. I got his homework and went over it to make sure I knew what it was, so I could help him understand it.
On the spelling words, there is this paragraph that says YOUR OWN WORDS.
Look for other words with unusual vowell spellings to add to your lists. Where might you see the words businesses and freight? A health article might tell you that a shoulder injury is  tough to heal. 

Right now my mind is hitting a blank.  I will have to ask my son what they want on that one.

He also has a few papers about learning interjections, prepositions, adverbs, and conjunctions.  Also subordinating conjunctions.  When I look at a sentence and have to label all the parts, it totally sucks.  Why you have to know what a complete predicate or just a predicate and a conjunction in a sentence is beyond me.  I mean how often do you sit down and write something and say  “Oh yeah, that is a subordinating conjunction, whew, I am glad I know that!”

I can see knowing verbs and nouns and subjects and predicates.  I called the teacher and she said I could come in anytime and sit in the class.  I might just do that to see if I can understand it better.  I knew all this stuff when I was in highschool but it has been over 40 years since I used all that stuff.  It is filed away in my brain in the trash section.  Heck, it has probably been burned and deleted since then. 

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I finally got a picture of the puppy next door.  They put it on it’s leash outside and it now sits and whines and barks until they let it in, which sometimes can be a long time. 

Zipping around

I made some new sugar water for the Hummingbird feeder yesterday. I didn’t make it red this time. The birds go for the red at the bottom, they don’t care if the water is clear or red. I also did some internet investigation and it says not to put the red dye in the water, I guess it is not good for the birds. I have a big bottle of red Hummingbird concentrate to mix with water and it makes the water really red, but I didn’t use it this time. You only have to have 4 cups of water to 1 cup of sugar to make the sugar water for the birds.
One bird has decided that he likes it so much, that he thinks it is all his. He sits on the hook holding the bottle and flits down and drinks from it and then sits on top to watch over it. Sometimes he flies over to a tree close by and sits and watches it too. Then when a bird flies over to get a drink, he flies around and dives at it and then chases it away and then goes to get his drink again and then sit on top to chase off any that come close. They do not care if you are sitting outside, they come really close to hitting you in the head it they are chasing each other. The bottle is big, there is enough to share. He should let everyone have a drink, they need their energy to fly south when it turns cold.

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The school that my son goes to has gone into the sell mode (they always do.)  They sell coupon books for $10.

My son brought home one coupon book and so we had to buy it.  Today they had a big motivation thing to get the kids all riled up to sell, sell, sell, those coupon books.  They put candy all over the floor and the kids that sold 2 books got to dive in and grab candy.  My son said he would sell 2 books, so he charged in and grabbed as much candy as he could.  I said “But you didn’t sell 2 coupon books….you only sold one.”   “But I am going to, I want to sell 100 of them, you get 2 tickets to go to a corn maze.”     “Um, there are a lot of children in this neighborhood all selling those coupon books, so I think the market is really saturated.  I don’t even know 100 people to sell them to….maybe 2 people.”  I made his dad drive him over to the guy that runs the crew to build houses around here and his main guy that works for him.  His name is Dennis.  Dennis always buys a coupon book from my son.  Those two guys bought a coupon book, so now my son has sold 3 books.  He can dive into the candy again……next week.  Joy…………..

Dennis said to my husband….”I can’t wait to have a lot of kids, so we can make you guys buy school stuff.”

Lady Gaga

I watched the MTV music awards show.  Lady Gaga wears the weirdest clothes ever. 
Here she is in the audience wearing this white spiky thing on her head.

It reminds me of this bracelet my son bought, all rubbery and squishy. A picture of it is this post.
I wonder if she saw one of those (they also come in balls like that too) and decided to make a head cover.
Ok, that one is strange but later she won a moon man award and there she is sitting in the audience all in red lace with a strange tall pointed hat and her face was all covered up. (I took a picture of her talking in that outfit. (Although I am sure you have alread seen it all over the web.) I have not seen anyone mention the white spiky hat though.

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My neighbor got a new puppy.  It is so cute, it is a boxer, her name is Lola.  Lola is full of spunk.  They have this really old dog, a boxer too, but she just pretty much lays around and can hardly walk, she limps around a lot.  I guess they got a new dog in case the old dog dies.  They have just started putting Lola on a long leash in the yard.  Now my yard is surrounded by bark mulch and bushes.   I was sitting at my table on my porch and watching Lola going wild in my yard in the mulch.  Her leash is just long enough that she can run up the area where the mulch is and wrap around my shrubs.  She also gets to running and kind of slinging her front legs back and forth, digging into the mulch and running and sliding on her tummy all the way across the yard.  She like to eat the wood in it too and run and dig and have a grand ole time tearing up my yard.  It was funny to watch her.  Then the neighbor ran out to get his dog.  He saw me and said he looked out his window and saw Lola having a great time.  He said “I will move the leash over so she can’t tear up your yard.”  See we made the part of the yard with the mulch because it is steep and it is hard to mow so we just decorated it so we would not have to mow the grass there.  When it rains really hard, the mulch does run off the slope, into his yard.  Now I know why.  I told him  “Well, she is cute, but the next time it rains, all the mulch will wash away into your yard because she knocked it all loose.”  It is supposed to rain for the next 4 days here.  There goes my mulch.

Sean and Con went up a hill

My son got this paper from school full of boxes for the month of September.  He has to do some type of exercise every day and write it down….for gym class homework.  He was sick for a lot of days the first two weeks.  Then he has loads and loads of homework.  There is so much homework everyday that it takes until bedtime to finish it every day, which totally sucks.  I hate the Language Arts homework.  He does not understand it and he asks the teacher and she must be a bitch because she tells him that he heard it and she is not going to explain it.  (He missed 6 days out of 10 because he was very sick, so I doubt that he heard it.)  So I am here going over his book trying to figure out the lessons.   It is about prepositions, conjunctions and interjections.  Then it is about compound prepositions.  Ok I figured that out but it is clear as mud when they throw these giant sentences with like 4 compound prepositions in the sentence.   Then you have to find the prepositional phrase.  I feel like I am going to school again and guess what, when you get out of school, you never give a rat’s ass what a compound preposition is or a pronoun or  what anything is called in a sentence.  A preposition is a word that relates a noun or a pronoun to some other word in a sentence but some can be made up of more words. 

So, yesterday when my son got home I said I would go for a walk with him to write on his paper that he did exercise yesterday.  It was 85 degrees and humid because it was going to rain, the sky was cloudy, so I got a bottle of water and we went out the door.  We were going to walk to our neighborhood pond.  It is hilly here, steep hills.  We head over to this new section and it goes down the hill to the water.  There is a new sidewalk that goes to a walkway that goes along the pond.  The new sidewalk was so steep, it was hard to walk down on it.  My knees were in pain from the angle of the sidewalk.  Ok, the walk to the lake was all down hill so we walk around the lake one time.  We saw lots of turtles sticking their heads out of the water.  Fish were jumping once in a while.  My 15 minute walk was turning into an hour and the sun had come out and it was hot.  I said “Let’s start back home.  We went to the dreaded sidewalk.  It looked even steeper looking up at it.  They should have built steps into it to make it easier to walk up.  It was like walking up a smooth escalator.    Then we had to walk up the street that was ultra steep.  When we got home I was so hot and tired and my feet and knees were screaming at me.  It started pouring down rain as soon as we went into the house. 

Today we went to the grocery store.  I checked the Coinstar.  There on the counter was a single coin.  It looked awful.  It was a penny that was so beat up, all broken all around it and in bad, bad, sad shape.  I picked it up though to take a picture and record my find…..I showed it to my son after I tried to wash it.  It didn’t help it.  My son said it was cool looking.  I said I wanted to throw it away.  My son kept it. 

Here is both sides of it.

Watched 8 hours of a Stephen King TV show

There is nothing on TV to watch.  All the shows are awful and I hate football.  I am reduced to watching shows like Inside Edition.  It is a gossip show.  I settle in to watch it and the local station  took over the TV the other day with their special showing of the Dedication for Smokey Mountains National Park being open for 75 years.  I don’t know why they had to waste money to rededicate it.  Dolly Pardon sang a song about her mountains.  Here is a video I made of her singing.  These mountains are close to where I live, about 40 minutes away. You can see Dolly singing here.  I stopped watching the show after that, they started having a lot of speeches.   

I also recorded 8 hours worth of shows by Stephen King called Golden Years.  It was made 18 years ago.  I watched all the shows and it was a total waste of time.  I might try to find the book though. 

I have another “Stuck on Stupid” photo today.  I didn’t think I would get one so quick…..but I did.  We were in traffic and this car was beside us.  There were two guys in the car and my son said “Those two guys are drinking beer.”  We were waiting for the red light.  The back of the guys car had a lot of beer boxes in the back seat.  I put my camera up to take a picture.  You can see in the picture that the passenger seat guy was looking at me.  I tried to get one of them drinking the beer, but they didn’t drink it again.  Then the driver turned and looked at me and stuck out his tongue.  I wish I had gotten that picture.  They were drinking and driving and looks like they had plenty in the back to keep them full.   You can see me in  my rear view mirror. 

We had another Coinstar find.  My son found a bent quarter.  It is really bent.  I wonder what they did to bend it?  I took two pictures of it, one from the side and one flat. 

I put it on clay to hold it up.

My son chose the gold C3po to be in the picture.  We got that in one of his Lego toys last year.  It is a collectors item and they are selling for $250 each on the internet.  They are rare.  He said he will never sell his or part with it.

It is not real gold, but Lego did give away real gold ones, we didn’t win the real gold one.

Stuck on Stupid

Don’t you just love my titles of my posts.  I usually  mention the words somewhere in the post.  It is not totally about being stuck on stupid.  I just liked the sound of it.  Actually I hate having to name a post.  Maybe I should just number them.  Anyway…….

We were supposed to go camping this weekend.  We made reservations months ago and paid for the fees.  It was somewhere in Kentucky.  My husband cancelled the camp site yesterday.  We only get like half the money back.  They charge cancellation fees and for the first night. 

My son has been sick for the past week.  He didn’t go to school for the past 3 days.  That is why we are not going camping, going out of town.  I don’t want my son to be sick when we go camping.  That would not be fun.  A virus is going around the school and a lot of kids are out sick, diarrhea, throwing up.  They even closed a school over in Alcoa, TN, yeah they make aluminum foil there.  They didn’t close our schools, but they sent me an e-mail saying that so many children are sick, that they will not gather the homework to send home.  I wanted to get the homework, it will be a lot to make up when my son goes back to school. 

 

Now for a Stuck on stupid photo.  I was sitting in my vehicle.  My husband went into the Goodwill donation area to donate something to the Goodwill.

It was beside the Dollar General store.  I love the Dollar General store because they sell the gum I like to chew, Clorets.  I saw this old guy with his truck parked crooked in the driveway.  That is where the cars drive.  He was just standing there and parked in front of the NO PARKING sign.  I guess he can’t read.  I took his

picture to put on my blog.

I read this digital photography blog.  They give tips on how to take better photos.    They had one post about taking pictures of strangers.  There is one club on Flickr that people have to take pictures of 100 strangers.  You go up to someone and ask them if you can take their picture, or don’t ask……I didn’t ask this guy, by the looks of him, I would not go up to him and say “Hey, mister, I noticed your are parked in front of that No Parking sign and you are sticking out in the road, the part where people drive by…..can I take a picture of you?”    Nah, I don’t think I would ask that. 

I was reading up on the laws about taking pictures and it says you can take a picture of anybody out in public.  You can even take pictures of cops too, they don’t have the right to stop you…..legally….but they might, just because they don’t want a picture taken….especially if they are beating up somebody….but you know that would be when people whip out their camera’s and take video of it and put it on Youtube.  If I do see someone interesting, I will take a picture of them, if I can do it in secret. 

A man standing in poop.

I just wanted to start this post with the worst thing I think anybody could do.  The thought just makes me sick.  Have you ever went to a park that had pit toilets.  They are usually out in the middle of no-where and there is the little wood building with a metal thing with a seat over a hole in the ground. (an outhouse).  Well this guy crawled inside of one.  This lady went in to use the potty and looked inside and there was this guy in there hiding…..in the poop….inside.  I guess he wanted to watch her go potty or poop.  I mean how gross is that.    I can’t even stand to go inside those things.  I hold my breath and run in and hurry and die if I have to take a breath.  I sit there and think  “Oh it stinks, I can’t stand it.”  If it really stinks I just don’t go in.  I would rather go find a tree and squat than to go in a outhouse.  The guy was also arrested just the other day inside the toilet hole again.  Some 11 year old boy went in and saw the guy down in the hole so he ran and told a ranger and they arrested him.  He said he dropped his shirt and crawled in to get it.  He said he took his shirt off to sit on the toilet because it was dirty.  They said if he would not sit on a dirty seat, they didn’t believe that he would then crawl into the shit to get a shirt.  Oh…..just the thought.  I feel sorry for the officer that had to cuff the guy and take him in to book him.  I think I would have brought a chain and drug him back to jail. 

Anyway…..on to my next subject.  A hummingbird.  The little hummingbirds buzz around my hummingbird feeder all day.  They zoom all around.  My husband was working in the garage and had the garage door open and the back door open too.  My husband is re-doing my kitchen and he was making a counter top for my new kitchen cabinets.  When it is all done I will take pictures.  I heard him talking out in the garage and I wondered who he was talking to.  I went out into the garage and said “Who are you talking to?”  I didn’t see anybody.  He pointed to the ceiling by the garage door opener.  “I am talking to that hummingbird.”  He said.  There was a little hummingbird, just sitting there.  Then the bird started flying and going up and hitting the ceiling, over and over and over.  He could not figure how to fly out of the garage.  He just figured if he flew up, he would get out, but bop, bop, bop, he just kept hitting the ceiling and then he would just sit on the garage door motor again.    I said to my husband “Get a net and guide it toward the door.”  He got down this big net we have.  My son wanted the net for the beach, to catch shells in the waves.   He went over by the bird, who was starting to panic, and put the net up.  The bird flew around and around in circles in the garage.  He finally flew over by the garage door between the ceiling and the open door.  My husband pushed the net up beside the bird and the bird just stepped on the rim of the net and stayed there.  Then hubby put the net outside and said “Go on, fly away.”  Then the bird flew away.  I can’t believe the bird stayed on the net while my husband was taking it outside. 

Coinstar find:    We went to Wal-Mart today.  My son was with us.  My son loves to check the Coinstar machines.  He gets down and always tries to look under them.   When he got up and came over to me some guy said “Hey, catch this.”  He thew my son a quarter.  “I wanted to give you that, I never saw anybody look under the Coinstar machine.”  He then walked off.  It was a quarter that I have been wanting for my quarter book.  I gave my son a quarter for it.  Now I only need a Utah quarter to have my quarter book complete.    I took a picture of the big find.  My son found 2 pennies and something that looked like a penny.   He then walked over to the pay phone and found two quarters, so I have that in the daily find.    The strange coin says PGA Tour, Charter Member , Partners Club.  It is the same on both sides.

This is all the coins.  I put them on my son’s Lego truck. 

And James, you can always use these pictures.

My Coinstar find

Today we went to Kroger.  They have an old looking Coinstar machine.  It has a little basket on the front, besides the coin return.  I look into it and found 3 things.  I snatched them up.  One strange item was there.  Let me show you. 

A tip for a drill or a screw driver.  A Canada  5 cent coin with a beaver dated 1963  and a beat up 1965 penny.  OK, here is the other side.

I put them on my Beta tank lid, in case you were wondering what the background is on the 2nd one.

My book came in the mail today.  I went to the bookstore the other day and they ordered me a book and said it would be 10 day.  I think that was last Friday.  It came fast.  It is a book on my Nikon D80.  Now I need to read it. 

I went out and beat around my green bean pole plant.  That thing is a giant.  There were so many beans on it and some I can’t reach because it is 8 feet tall.  There were lots of dead leaves and icky bugs that look like lady bugs but they are yellow with black spots and bigger than lady bugs.  They are on all the leaves and are eating my entire plant.  I spend a lot time picking them off, but there are so many leaves that you can’t find them all.  I must be allergic to the leaves because my face had a bad rash all over it when I came into the house and my arms were all itchy.   I went and looked in the mirror and my face was all red.  I went and took a shower and washed my skin.  It finally stopped itching.  I might just chop the whole thing down.  It is almost time for them to start dying out anyway. 

I went to the pet store and bought a new clear rock for my Hermit crab tank.  The rock cost $1.69.  I also bought 3 shells for them.  One crab really checked them out but then went back to sleep.  I put in a flower from my cantaloupe plant last night.  They ate almost all of it.  I read that they like flowers.  I think I will give them one of my squash flowers tomorrow.  I picked a red pepper.  The only one that grew on my pepper plant.

I will cook it with chicken tomorrow. I am going to cut it up and cook it with onion and then put in the chicken and make fajitas.