Emotionally Exhausted

We had BG's visitation this evening. It was harder than I thought it would be. But at least I had lots of friends around me. I think if I had been there by myself I would have lost it.

They gave us time and even loaned us a state vehicle so we could all go as a group. Or several groups, actually. That was nice of them.

When I came back and went out on the yard it was a good thing that nothing happened. I had to fight to keep myself focused on where I was and what I was doing, and that isn't good. I should have gone up and said "Hey, I'm apparently toast. I need to go." But pigheaded me hung around until Sgt Uncle Buck and Lt Strong came up and said "Man, you look tired. We have plenty of people. Go home."

So I did. And it was a good thing. I'm worn.

The funeral is tomorrow right before work. I'm sure I'll be in fine form then. Yeah.

We'll see.

Wednesday will be Dare Day. I dare one of those knuckleheads to get stupid the way our mood has been lately. It's also National Go Barefoot Day, Stand For Children Day and Say Something Nice Day.

A Very Long Day

Today was longer than I thought it would be. If I would have called in nobody would have thought twice about it. But then I would have had to fight myself to come in the next day and that would have been even harder.

The day was interminable. I thought it would never end. Not that anything bad happened, it was just my mood. Dark and gloomy and kind of depressed.

We spent the last couple of days talking about BG, of course. Remembering things he did and said that made him so special.

Ms. Archer called me yesterday morning and reminded me of one day down in the Hive (of course) when some knucklehead was pretending to be unconscious in his cell. We all just stood around in a little knot outside the cell waiting for the nurse to get there and tell us yes, he was faking it, so we could write him up and go on our way.

As we stood there waiting, BG suddenly piped up and said "We should get together like this more often!"

I laughed so hard I almost fell over the rail.

That was him, all right. He rarely said anything in front of a group of people, but when he did, it was always a gem.

I remember the first time I went down to the Hive to do rec. I walked in there and someone said "Oh, you have to work with BG! You probably won't like it. He's pretty strange." And someone else said "Yeah, if he says anything, let me know. I'm not even sure he can talk!"

They had me a little worried, then this mountain of a guy came through the door and grabbed up the rec list. Giving me little more than a glance he said "Ready?"

Yeah..... I suppose so....

He didn't talk to me at first. Not really. He just asked the inmates if they were going. If one said yes, he'd point and say "Him."

Once we got them out on the rec yard and we got to sit down I tried a few different ploys to open up a conversation and didn't get much more than single syllable answers.

Then I mentioned something about going to a yard sale.

And the flood gates opened.

Once we got back into the house one of the guys asked me "Did he say anything?"

To which I replied "Yeah. Now how do I get him to shut up again?"

Tomorrow is the visitation, which is going to be hard. And the next day is the funeral which will probably be harder.

Not sure if I'll write about it or not. I guess we'll see.

Tuesday will be National Macaroon Day. It will also be What You Think Upon Grows Day (okey dokey) and World No Tobacco Day. Yeah, good luck with that. Talk about an apocalypse....

In Memorium

I had planned, this weekend to write about Memorial Day and how it started and what it really means for those who don't know.

But instead I will write about my good friend BG, who passed away last night.

As you may remember, he came in to work one day in April and wasn't feeling well and ended up in the hospital. Then into the ICU which scared the crap out of all of us. He told us that he had a bleeding ulcer which gave him anemia and blood clots in his legs, but that he was getting better and would be back to work soon.

What he didn't tell us was that he also had cancer.

That is so much like him. He was such a private person that it took a bright light and rubber hose to get any personal information out of him most days. I was his partner for five and a half, almost six years, and it took four years before I found out that he had a brother. Of course I didn't find out his brothers name until almost three years later when I met him in the hospital.

That was so much like him.

I didn't get to see my friend after he got out of the hospital. He didn't really want to see anybody anyway, being embarrassed about being sick and all. I figured I had embarrassed him enough seeing him laid up in the hospital. He was a true stoic.

And a Luddite, for all intents and purposes. BG didn't own a computer, a cell phone, a DVD player or even a VCR. He still got his teevee signal from an antenna on his roof and spent alot of time listening to AM radio.

He was also a notorious miser. He would do ridiculous things like not turning on his water heater until right before he needed hot water. A few minutes ago his brother told me "He could pinch a penny and get miles out of it."

BG was an avid collector of antique glass and other things like presidential campaign buttons, stereoscope pictures and cookie jars. He was also an expert on local history, old cars and almost anything older than him. He was a fountain of fascinating information.

BG was also the rock that the Hive was tethered to for many many years. He helped shape and solidify alot of the policies and procedures that made the place run as well as it did. And he helped shape me into the officer that I am today. I've tried to live up to someone that he would be happy to work with.

If he could see me now, my eyes brimming with tears threatening to drip onto my keyboard he would snort and say "Don't be a fool, Rev. Get up from behind that stupid machine and get some work done." I'll try to do that.

The visitation is on Tuesday and the services on Wednesday. The Honor Guard will be there to represent us and to be his pall bearers. I think BG would be secretly proud of that. We will all be there, too. As many of us as can come.

On that note, I'm going to get up from behind this stupid machine and try to get some work done.

BG's work is done. Ours continues.

Rest well, my friend.

Mad, Just Mad

I'm so mad. Just freaking pi**ed. I missed it!

I found out just the other day via this article that there has been a national pun-off competition going on for the last 34 years and I have missed them all!

And the last one was just freaking last Saturday!

Oh, the humanity!

Puns have been my favorite form of humor most of my life. Even before I really knew what they were. One of my favorite authors, Spider Robinson, uses some horrible horrible puns in some of his books and I love them. There have been times that I had to throw the book down and run screaming from the room, some of them have been so bad.

And to think there have been punsters, paronomasiacs to be exact, gathering in the same place for the last 34 years to test their skills against one another..... Oh! I'm still peeved that I didn't know about it much sooner.

Of course, I'm going to have to go next year. And I'll have to take the Watcher along with me. He's one of the few who can out-pun me on a regular basis.

If you'd like to know more about the competition, go here and check out their website. I'm sure it will make you groan in dismay or delight, depending on your sense of humor.

And just because I have tossed in so many links tonight, here's one more just for the halibut.

And now on to the calendar before I get smacked. Saturday's celebrations are National Hamburger Day (for which I will gladly pay you Tuesday), Slugs return From Capistrano Day, International Jazz Day, Julia Pierpont Day, and the Amateur Radio Military Appreciation Day.

Okey dokey.

Sunday will be End Of The Middle Ages Day, the Indianapolis 500, Rogation Sunday (It's apparently a Catholic thing), and Rural Life Day.

And Monday will be My Bucket's Got A Hole In It Day. Dear Liza, dear Liza...., Loomis Day (you got me) and Memorial Day. Not just a day for shopping, folks! Remember those who fought and died for our country! All of them!

Unemployable

Most of the people that I know that work here at the prison came here form other jobs. There are a good number of them who had retired from their other jobs and came to work for the state. Mostly due to the fact that if you retire before you are 65 you are just screwed.

Unless you were the CEO of some huge corporation or a senator or something.

There are alot of retired military folk working here that just couldn't make it on retirement benefits. That's just a blasted shame. You would think if you had the stuff to serve your country for twenty years, at least a quarter of your natural life, that your government would be able to take care of you for the rest of it.

I'm not talking smack about my country or my government. I'm just saying that it's not right.

Anyway.

Some of the folk here are in their first jobs, which is a little scary. Just the thought of them getting their first exposure to the workforce in a prison. What next? leave the prison and go be a dentist? "Open your mouth, boy! Do it NOW!!!"

Or go be a greeter at WalMart and pat search all of the shoppers as they come and go to make sure they aren't carrying any contraband. I'll bet that would cut down on the shoplifting!

Me, I think I would be a good bill collector. None of those namby-pamby letters in the mail or dunning phone calls. I would come to their door and say "Give me the money now. If you do not give me the money now, I will spray you, slam you to the concrete and put you in a cell with a 300 pound man with nineteen different personalities. And twelve of those don't like deadbeats. Six of the others don't like anybody. The last one is a Ritz cracker."

I'll bet I would be successful.

But some of these people..... I don't know. There are some of them that I don't think could find another job anywhere. And we only put up with them because they have been here forever, like Kermit. They have been here for so long they are more institutionalized than the inmates and it would be cruel to them and the rest of the world to try and make them go out and find another job.

Where else can you be rude and illiterate and socially dysfunctional and still get paid for it?

Besides talk radio, anyway. And reality teevee shows. I don't know.

And I'm starting to get that way myself now after all these years. I really suspect that I would find it hard trying to fit in out in the square world after all this time. I imagine most places look down on you slamming and cuffing rude customers. That could be a deal breaker.

I may just have to stick it out here. **sigh**

Let's just go check the calendar, then. If we must. Friday will be the Body Painting Arts Festival. Where??? OMG! I want to go to that! It will also be Cellophane Tape Day, Player Piano Day and Wig Out Day. Cool, man..... just cool.

No, I'm Not Dead Yet

But I have definitely been blowing in the wind today. Took some more big nasty weather hits. I looked at the statewide weather radar before I left for work and there were eleven tornado warning boxes scattered all over the state. By the time I got to work four of them were directly west of us and coming in fast.

It's all over the national news, apparently. I've been getting emails from friends and family back home saying "Are you daid, boy?"

Naw, aint daid yet!

It hadn't rained a drop until I got into the parking lot, then it started with a few of those widely scattered big fat raindrops that hit like toads dropping from the sky. One of them hit the brim of my hat and knocked it down onto the top of my glasses.

Then as I was walking up to the admin building I heard this "pock!" and looked down and saw a small hailstone, about the size of a pea, bouncing across the ground. Snap! I ran for shelter, but the hail stopped just as fast as it started.

I had already lost power at home once this morning and hoped we weren't going to be having any more of that at work. I was wrong. Later on when I went to lock up the admin building I no sooner walked into the hall and turned the corner when "poof!" the lights went out. I almost smacked into the wall in the dark. And when the power went out it killed the power to the siren outside too, apparently. It died when the lights did. That was kind of spooky. That one also knocked out some of our phone lines for awhile. Only the control center could call outside of the institution for a couple of hours. Whee!

I have to tell you, getting everybody secured and sheltered and fed at the same time is quite challenging. You have to time the movements in between little breaks in the storm. It got done, but it sure took awhile. We were lucky we didn't get anybody hurt.

Last night when I was out on the yard everybody kept talking and worrying about the storms that were rolling in today. I kept saying "Don't worry. It will be okay." Finally after the third or fourth time I said that someone said "We might get a tornado! Why the snap do you keep saying it will be okay?" I just gave them my widest smile and said "Because I'll be safe up in the comm room! It will be fine!"

Boy, I got a cussing out for that one, let me tell you.

We didn't get hit by an actual tornado, but we got straight line winds and rain and hail and lightning. Everything but a tornado. There was one small one reported just south of us heading our way but it dissipated before it could get here. And there was baseball sized hail reported up north of us.

Dodged another bullet. I hope we can keep dancing around long enough to survive storm season.

There's supposed to be another round working it's way in tomorrow night. Of course. My night on the yard and my night for the Del Norte walk. Joy!

So Thursday will be Grey Day. That should be easy. Just look under my hat. It will also be National Spelling Bee Day. And amazingly enough, that seems to be all. A simple day to celebrate for a change. Yay!

Zombie Apocalypse!

I had actually been saving this post title and picture for something else but this seems more fitting. Besides, the kids (not mine, somebody elses) kept me chatting in the parking lot until almost 1 am which is my bed time.

So here I am once again, nodding at my keyboard trying to be coherent.

There's a new blog in town. It's called They Won't Get Us and so far it's all about zombies. Short stories penned by my friend FlyinMonkey aka Tango J. he has a great imagination and a great sense of humor and I think you should go give his stuff a look.

There's only two stories up right now but I'm hoping for lots more. If we can keep his enthusiasm as high about his writing as it is about reading about zombies and other creepy things that go bump in the night, there should be enough material here to keep us entertained for a long time.

Go check him out and comment! I think he might get a better grade in his writing class that way too.

On to the calendar before I fall face first into the keyboard here.

Wednesday will be (er.. already is) National Tap Dance Day. Get your tap shoes on, Martha! We're going to cut a rug! It is also a bunch of exciting other things like African freedom Day, Cookie Monster's Birthday, Nerd and Geek Pride Day and Towel Day. You should always know where your towel is!

Running On Empty

Whew. Lawsy. I have to stop and think about what I'm writing here. It's difficult.

Some real bad storms blew through last night. Part of the storm system that hit us also did some pretty major damage to a town not too far away and killed alot of people.

Lucky for us it split in two and we got passed by on both sides. But it was a close thing.

Something about last night got me all squirreled up. Had strange crazy dreams about some of the stupidest stuff. My dogs have fleas, so we put flea spray on their beds. Now the dogs won't sleep on their beds because they smell like flea spray. Should we wash them or throw them out and get new ones?

I couldn't decide! It was becoming a huge issue and driving me crazy like the freaking tell tale heart or something....

What the freaking holy mother of snap was that all about?

The dreams woke me up at 3am, about two hours after I went to sleep. Tried to go back to sleep and tossed and turned for an hour. Then, just as I was dropping back off again, the wife's alarm clock went off and scared the snap out of me. I almost fell out of bed.

And after an adrenaline rush like that I knew I wasn't going to sleep anymore so I just went ahead and got up and got my first cup of coffee.

It has been an

Extremely

Long

Day.

I sure as heck aint fifteen years old anymore. Back then I could go days without sleep. And I'd be fine. Today I'm lucky I didn't pepper spray myself. Tonight I keep losing track of what I am writing in mid-sentence. I have to keep looking at what I've just written and go "What?".

Pfui.

Tonight I don't care where the dogs sleep. They can nestle amongst the fine china for all I care. Curl up in the Cadbury Eggs or build a freaking couch fort and have a camp out.

I'm going to bed.

Oh yeah, the calendar. Tuesday will be National Escargot Day. Mmmmm... freaking snails. Yum. It will also be Brother's Day and Hug Your Cat Day. I don't know how apropos it would be to hug your cats brother or even to hug your brothers cat, but there you go.

Just don't hug any snails. That's just nasty.

Left Behind?

I waited around last night wondering in the back of my mind if there was the slightest chance that lunatic in California might be right.

Not like I was all that concerned. I knew I wasn't going anywhere. Not unless all of those perceptions about heaven were drastically wrong.

Then again, maybe the rapture did come and the only ones worthy were two people from locations so remote that nobody will ever notice them missing. And afterwards Gawd looked down and said "My planned tribulations are nothing compared to what's going on down there right now. Meh. Forget it."

I can see that happening. He would have to have not only a sense of humor but a supreme sense of irony as well.

When I went to bed last night after checking the news to make sure I hadn't missed anything, I took half a Tylenol PM along with my sleepy meds. Even half a tablet reacts with my meds and I slept until almost 9 am. I'm still a bit drowsy even now. Think I'll just skip those from now on.

The house was quiet when I awoke, which was weird and a tad bit spooky. But when my ears cleared out all of the sleep noise I could hear my wife playing music on her iPod down in the living room. The song was "Nobody Left To Run With Anymore" by the Allman Brothers, which was funny and ironic. It made me smile.

A quick check of the blogs and I was sure that all of my friends were still here as well. Unless, of course, they have wi-fi in heaven. Or wherever they ended up. Either way as long as we still have internet access, right?

After counting some numbers in my head and looking at the cover of a high school algebra book, I predict the end of that fool Camping and his undeserved riches by the end of the week. He should be charged with creating a public nuisance, inciting to riot, accessory to attempted murder and sedition. He's obviously a dangerous lunatic and should be, at minimum, tossed into a mental institution for the rest of his life.

But then, I have issues. Obviously.

There was a quote on somebody's blog this week: "If you talk to Gawd, you are considered religious. If Gawd talks to you, you are considered psychotic."

Or something like that. All I have to add to that is....

Amen.

Who Left That Fan There?

Just about every day I go to work I ask the first person I see "Anything exciting going on?" Ninety nine times out of a hundred they will reply "Nah. Aint nothing happening." That's always good to hear.

Today I came in and asked Sgt Shoulders and he said "Well, I heard something about a use of force earlier but there's nothing really happening."

Okay. Sounded like a little excitement, but nothing major. Cool.

I go through central and I see one of the day shift yard dogs sitting in the office in his t-shirt. That's never a good sign.

I said "Blood or pepper spray or both?"

He said "Blood. he said he wasn't going to work and he sure wasn't going to the Hive." He smiled up at me and added "I showed him he sure was going to the Hive! And he went!"

So on my way down to six house I keep hearing all of this radio traffic back and forth. Go there and come here and call me. And come get me and go get him, etc. Most of it seemed to happening at 7 house, right next door. But none of it from my destination. I was pleased.

Then I hear a call from 9 house that they found a razor blade and they needed to come do a couple of escorts over that. And I hear that they found a "white powdery substance" in some guys hat sewed into the seam of it and were sending it up for testing.

I start thinking "Maybe I should have called out and stayed home today."

I stepped out in front of the house to help watch the yard because all of the yard dogs were off doing escorts and searching when this awful noise starts up from inside 6 house.

Oh snap! It's the freaking fire alarm!

Rush inside the house and start shooing all of the inmates outside. Have to evacuate the house and look for evidence of a fire at the same time.

Just as we were calling the Code 70 (fire) at 6 house, I heard somebody call something at 7 house but I couldn't hear it because of the fire alarm.

And as we got the house cleared and were looking for smoke, I heard "10-6 the 10-49, housing unit 7." Which means "We got the fight under control and don't need any more help, thank you."

Oh freaking snap. A fight. Nobody hurt, staff-wise. No use of force on that one. Thank goodness.

It turned out that the fire alarm was just a smoke detector that went bad and was sending a fire signal to the control panel. Unfortunately, the detectors are all the way up on the ceiling... what, twenty feet up? More? Maybe as much as thirty feet. They have to get a genie lift in to change it out and somebody pissed off the maintenance guy and he hung up the phone and went home.

Managed to get the audio alarm silenced but the blinking lights in the wings will probably be on until Monday when the guy has a chance to cool off and come back to work. Lovely.

So all in all, I think they locked up 14 offenders today. One of the 2-10 guys in the Hive said they got seven of them after he got there.

I am so glad I wasn't down there today. I'm sure it was a goat rope.

Surprisingly, the rest of our evening went fairly smooth. I think they locked up two out of 10 house for something, but that was it. I never had to run anywhere and I was glad.

It's been a long freaking week.

So tomorrow will be Armed forces Day, National Memo Day and National Waitresses/Waiters Day, as well as the freaking apocalypse or the rapture or whatever they call it. It's also National Endangered Species Day, O. Henry Pun Day and Sister Maria Hummel Day.

If you must know, she was a nun that created the artwork which inspired what became known as Hummel figurines. Her artwork pissed off Adolph Hitler, which is good enough in my book.

Sunday will be Buy-A-Musical-Instrument Day, Lag B'Omer (It's a Jewish holiday celebrating the end of some plague somewhere around the year 135 CE) and National Maritime Day.

Monday will be Penny Day, Declaration of the Bab Day (A central figure in the Bahai religion from the 1800's), National Taffy day and World Turtle Day.

As you can guess, it's been a day. Off to bed, all of you!

Half-Fast

On Thursdays when i do the Del Norte walk it's my job to notice which of the 40-some lights in my zone are not working and write them down so they can get fixed as soon as possible.

Theoretically, anyway.

In the year (more or less) since I've been out of the Hive and doing the long walk at least once a week I think they may have fixed a grand total of five lights.

Three of which are now broken again.

Also, the light poles have numbers on them so we can identify which ones aren't working. Those poles were put up twenty years ago and the numbers painted on them then as well. Many of them have faded into complete illegibility.

I have put in several work orders to have the numbers repainted. I figure if we can get the lights fixed right, we will at least be sure which ones are broken.

So they sent inmates out with paint and stencils and they started repainting the lights. They are replacing the numbers on both the front and back of the poles.

They replaced half of the numbers in front (where you can't see them from inside the fence) and maybe a quarter of the ones inside and then stopped. Then about two weeks later they started repainting over the old numbers with a white patch to put on new numbers. And then stopped again. That was a couple of weeks ago.

So now even the ones with numbers we could read have nothing but a white patch of paint on them and no discernible numbers at all. If you want to know which light pole is broken you have to keep track of how many you have passed since the last one that had a readable number.

Of course, it's inmates doing the painting. They don't care if the lights work or if we can read the numbers! They would be perfectly happy if none of the freaking lights worked at all!

Duh!

Sometimes this place makes me need to clear my throat loudly.

I knew I should have taken that job as CEO of Microsoft when I had the chance...

So tomorrow is Friday. And, according to the calendar it will be Eliza Doolittle Day. She was a character from George Bernard Shaw's play Pygmalion. I vaguely remember it. I think it's the play that they based My Fair Lady on, but I could be mistaken. It's been known to happen. It's also International Virtual Assistants Day (?), Mike-the Headless Chicken Day (look it up yourself!), Bike To Work day and Weights and Measures Day.

Y'all have fun with that.

Mock Disaster Was A ...... Disaster

We were supposed to have a state-wide earthquake disaster drill late last month or so and they cancelled it because of severe weather.

I guess that they assume that disasters only happen during the day when the weather is nice, I guess. Like half the freaking state isn't already a disaster area what with all the flooding...

So they counted early and kept the yards closed and all inmate movement to a minimum. They held a few people over from midnight shift and called in our E-squad for the extra manpower.

Their scenario was that a large quake hit us. Somewhere around a 6.5 magnitude. Multiple buildings collapsed and there were dead and dying and injured all over the place. And later aftershocks took down most of the buildings that were still standing after the first one.

All of our big chiefs sprang into action and were directing people here and there. Usually at odds with some other chief who had just told people to go somewhere else. There was mass confusion and, from what I hear, we were really lucky somebody didn't get actually hurt.

I got all of this second hand. Luckily it was all over by noon while I was still outside mowing my lawn.

The upshot of it was; if a big one hits, we're screwed. Nobody has a solid clue of how to react to something like that. All we can do is hope it doesn't happen.

And on that note, I'm checking the calendar and going to bed.

Thursday (my night on the yard) is going to be Frog Jumping Jubilee Day. It's also Boys Club Day and May Ray Day. Whatever the heck that means.

I looked it up. It's a day to celebrate the warm summer days and it is also a celebration day for anybody named Ray. Kind of a two-fer, I guess. Huzzah!

Knee Deep In Estrogen

I was excited when I came in today. Well, as excited as I ever am at the prospect of going to work, anyway.

They were going to let me work the wobblehead house and Sgt Miz P was going to be there! If it came together it would have been the first time we had actually gotten to work an entire shift together since I left the Hive. Almost a year ago. We'd been scheduled to work together before but every time one of us ended up getting pulled at the last minute.

She and I go way back. We have been through some serious stuff together, mostly down in the Hive back when she was one of the working stiffs. I could tell you stories... We had some fun back then.

So I was overjoyed when I got down to the house and she was there. They had pulled her last night to work the Control Center because Sgt Puddle called out and I was afraid they might do it again. But they didn't and she was there and I was happy.

My grin faltered just a smidgen when I realized that I was the only male working the house, though.

Not that I have anything against women in general or women working in a prison, mind you. It's not like that at all. Some of the very best officers we have are women. And there are a few (Sgt Miz P, for example) that I would want to pick to be at my back if things went south.

I just don't like being outnumbered, you see. And being outnumbered three to one is just a losing battle, no matter who you are.

So I got to be the foil to many of their jokes, which I didn't mind so much. I'm used to it. But sometimes when they all started talking all at the same time (having all worked together for quite some time now) I started feeling a little overwhelmed.

And if you will forgive me the extremely sexist remark here, it sounded like I was in the middle of a very busy hen house.

But hey, we could always use the eggs... (grin)

We had a good time, generally. Miz Cackle brought in a big bag of ribs from the local rib shack and had enough to share aplenty. I spent a good part of the evening in a chair gnawing on bones. And, of course, chewing on bones brought up a few jokes at my expense as well. I didn't mind that so much either.

Miz Nice brought in the latest Avon catalogs and even offered to sell me something if I were in the need of any cosmetic products. I politely declined and offered instead my little speech on the historical significance of facial makeup and what it meant.

As I understand it, the prostitutes in ancient Babylonia used combinations of colors for eye shadow and lipstick to denote which sexual acts they were fluent in and what prices they charged.

This may or may not be entirely accurate, but it does denote my general distaste for the whole makeup thing in general. I will agree that minimal amounts of cosmetics can be attractive for most women. They can subtly accent certain facial features and make them more alluring and pleasing to the eye. But the ones who cake the stuff on with a trowel and cover their entire face with creams and powders and paints is just ridiculous.

When your face is one color and your neck is another color completely, you are using too much makeup, in my opinion.

In my younger years my mother had a friend who would paint her whole face this odd orange color. I guess she was trying to look like she had a good tan. She also shaved off her eyebrows and painted them on higher up on her forehead.

I told my mom that she looked like a surprised pumpkin. She though she looked good, I guess. I thought it was silly as hell. And I would always refer to her as "the pumpkin lady". I got smacked a few times for that.

Wow. Here I am again, wondering how the heck I got here.

Wayyyyy off subject.

We had a good time and all of the wobbleheads behaved themselves for a change. That was nice. Almost all of them remember me in one way or another. The ones I had no problems with were pleasant. The other ones knew to give me a wide berth and I was fine with that.

And I got free ribs. That was awesome.

So Wednesday is going to be International Museum Day and Visit Your Relatives Day. None of my relatives live anywhere near here so I may just have to take a pass on that one. And all of the museums are well over an hour away so.... well, you know. It's also going to be Mother Whistler Day, National Employee Health and Fitness Day and Turn Beauty Inside Out Day.

That's just going to be a tough one to celebrate, I suppose.

Miscommunication

Well, Sgt Uncle T is back at work. Doing fine and better than ever. Feeling pretty good, anyway.

Doing good for a guy who had his heart stopped for three and a half minutes. That just blows me away that they can do that.

They only kept him for a day at the hospital then sent him home. When I got his cell phone number I apparently got the wrong one, for a phone that doesn't work anymore. Dang Sausage had both that one and the good number, but never called the good number and never let me know he had it.

And dang St Francis and Capt Fluffy both went by and saw him the day after and never said anything. I'm half tempted to smack their heads together and see if it makes that coconut sound like it always does on teevee. Don't they know how I worry?

Oh no.... Don't mind me... I'll just sit here in the dark and worry.... I'm fine. Jerks.

And I still haven't heard from BG to find out how he's doing or when he's coming back. I can't seem to catch him at home and it's driving me nuts not knowing.

I was out on A-yard today and there was a fight out there right before shift change. Day shift got it stopped pretty quick and got the guys locked up before shift, which was good. I always hate it when stuff spills over from one shift to another. But they handled it.

Sgt Archer, the Fireman and I stepped out on the yard and all three of us could sense the tension. All the inmates were in weird little clusters. Segregated clusters. All the black guys were in groups and all the white guys were in groups and nobody was moving near each other and there was no mixing going on at all. Only a very few of the more oblivious inmates were walking around by themselves or in pairs.

It felt like I could have walked into the middle of they yard and yelled "Hey!" and they would have either run away or started fighting each other. Or a mixture of both.

Luckily the yard closed without any further incident and when it reopened after chow things were much calmer and all the little knuckleheads behaved themselves. I didn't want to do any paperwork.

They had an impromptu movement team on some idiot down in the Hive this evening. I don't know all of the particulars of who and why. Almost all of the members of the team were young guys, except for St Francis. He was the oldest. By probably close to twenty years on some of them. He's still in pretty good shape for a guy of his advanced years. :-p

All of those years down in the Hive they would never put me on a team because I was assigned to the Hive and they said it would be a conflict of interests or something like that. I would have to deal with the idiot later so they didn't want me involved. Now that I'm not down there any more they still won't pick me. I'm the guy that gets left to watch the yard.

I don't get hurt and I don't have to do the paperwork (which I am amazing at, if i must say so myself), so why am I complaining? Hell, I don't know. Just because I am missing out on the excitement, I guess.

I should be thankful. After all, the paperwork for a team sucks. It takes hours to do it right. And I am very nearly half a century old. Which isn't really all that old, but sure does sound like it when you say that I am almost half a freaking century old.

Five decades. That doesn't sound much better, does it?

I am almost one twentieth of a millennium in age.

Let's just say I'm bloody near fifty and leave it at that, shall we? Anyway, I'm not a spring chicken anymore and don't need to be getting all banged up if I can avoid it.

And how the heck did I get on this subject anyway? I haven't a clue.

Let's just go check the calendar, which is set in stone, much like my birth certificate.

Tuesday will be Pack Rat Day. That's all about me. Hence all the books. It's also World Hypertension Day, World Information Society Day and World Telecommunications Day.

Whee! And where would all this be without information and telecommunications? Not here, that's for sure! I'd be scribbling all of this down on old scraps of paper and xeroxing them to send out via snail mail.... Let's not go there.....

Friday The Thirteenth!

Hokey smokes I thought it was going to be an epic 13th. Started out with Blogger down, of course. Couldn't post and couldn't read..... I almost started to hyperventilate. It's a dang good thing I have lots of books as backup entertainment sources.

Got in to work and the first thing I hear was that there was a stabbing this morning on B-yard. Inmate on inmate. No staff involved, fortunately. Only minor injuries. They were still looking for the perpetrator(s).

From the way I heard the story I'm almost willing to think that he did it to himself to try and get somebody else locked up. It wouldn't be the first time.

We were all standing outside central, having gotten there early when they suddenly came over the radio and closed the yards. As we stood there wondering why they closed, the tornado sirens started going off. I rolled my eyes at Sgt Uncle Buck and said "Oh snap, here we go!"

Fortunately there was no tornado. The storm passed over pretty quickly but they never reopened the yards. Just left them locked down until after count time. So we got an hour and a half or so of slack time to just hang out at dining and wait for count to clear. That was nice.

The skies were still looking a little menacing and the Fireman said "Just you wait. As soon as they call mainline, it will start raining. It never fails."

Sure enough. Just as soon as count cleared and they called mainline so we had to go out on the yard to watch the movements, it started raining.

It rained all through chow and off and on until after we left for the evening. I kept watching the sky. One layer of clouds was going one way and another layer was going another. Never a good sign. But we lucked out.

Friday the 13th started with a bang and ended with a soggy whimper. I'm not complaining. I got wet, but I made it out in one piece and that's all that counts.

So Saturday will be National Dance Like A Chicken Day, International Migratory Bird Day, National Letter Carrier Food Drive Day, Underground America Day and Stay Up All Night Day.

Stay Up All Night Day. That makes no sense whatsoever. Grammatically, anyway.

Sunday will be National Chocolate Chip Day (Yum!), International Day Of Families, Nylon Stockings Day (hmmmm...), Pizza Party Day and Armed Forces Day.

And Monday will be Wear Purple For Peace Day, Biographers Day, National Sea Monkey Day and Victoria Day.

And I'm calling it a day before Blogger goes down again. Nite!

Aggravated Sigh

As most of you probably have noticed, Blogger has been down since late last night again. It's enough to make me stamp my little feet. And now that it's up again, they seem to have misplaced my last post and several of the replies.

Ach, well. Nothing to do but get on with it, I suppose. Unless we all want to combine our monthly allowances and buy the thing ourselves (yeah, right) we'll just have to put up with the occasional aggravation. Generally, they have been pretty good and I have few complaints.

And snit does happen now and then. Cest la vie, I suppose.

Another open letter. This time to Sgt Uncle T:

Sgt Uncle T,
You're a jerk. I just want to get that out in the open right away. You told us all that you were going in for surgery on the 4th and that it was pretty serious. Apparently you told Sausage that your wife would call and let us know how you were doing. She never called. Your phone is shut off and you are not answering emails either. Nobody has your wife's number so we can't call her. What the snap? Everybody keeps driving me crazy asking how you are doing and I can't tell them anything. I ask Lt Muppet every now and then if he's heard anything (since you guys live so close to each other) and he hasn't heard and he's getting as pissed off as I am about everyone asking. So I am going to quit bothering him before he snaps at me again.

Just so you know, if you were here right now I would grab your nose like Moe did to Curly all of the time and twist it until you gave me your wife's phone number and email address. Then I would twist it some more until you said that you were very very sorry and promised never to make me worry like that again.

Then I would call you a jerk again. So there!

Today, being Friday the 13th, is Leprechaun Day. Let's hope one offsets the other. It's also Blame Someone Else Day and Frog Jumping Day.

I'm all for blaming someone else. Think I'll blame Sgt Uncle T since he isn't around anyway. That works, hey?

Blogger Down!

Rotten Blogger was down for maintenance when I got home last night. I didn't know that until I had already taken my meds.

I had finally decided on something to write about. Since it was another fairly boring night in the comm room my options were open. If I decided to write about that it would have been really short and fairly simple.

"Man! It's freaking hot up there!"

And that would have been about it. Either the a/c is broken or they haven't turned it on yet. In the Control Center, which is just down the stairs, you can get it cold enough to see your breath. Ms Odd usually wears her coat at work when it's 90 degrees outside. I suspect sometimes that those pink cheeks of hers are due to long term frostbite. And the reason Sgt Puddle is so skinny despite his massive sugar intake is that he burns off all of the caloric intake shivering.

But less than fifty feet away and half a flight of stairs up I'm sitting in a room with probably somewhere over a hundred thousand dollars worth of sensitive electronic gear that works and lasts alot longer when it's cool, there's not a breath of a/c coming out of the vent. We have to buy and borrow and steal fans to keep ourselves and the plastic of the equipment from slagging down as we are vainly trying to keep them working at all.

And people have the temerity to come up the steps and bitch at me because it's hot. Let me tell you Lunchmeat, there's a reason they put that wire mesh across the door, and it aint for security. I'm sure I won't be the first one up there to snap from the heat. It's to keep me from pulling some idiot through that little hole and pounding them into oatmeal.

So I guess I had something to say about that after all. I don't think that was what I had planned last night when I got home but for the life of me I can't remember exactly what it was going to be. I really should take notes or something.

All I know for sure was that I had a picture of Dave Barry saved in my file. Exactly where I was going with that, I can't quite remember.

Hopefully it will come to me again.

Today is Limerick Day. It's also National Nutty Fudge Day and Odometer Day.

"A blogger who worked in a prison
Tried now and then to give his readers a frisson.
He wrote about twits
And unrepentant little sh*ts
Deciding to make that his life's mission."

Give me a break. I've only had one cup of coffee.

It's A Blog About Nothing!

Back when I first started this blog, I was down in the Hive on day shift and needed a place to vent. It was extremely stressful and I was having trouble sleeping and needed somewhere to blow besides at the wife and kids. They didn't put up with that very well, as you can imagine. I get to be a real pr*ck when I'm stressed.

So I started ranting here. I could scream all I wanted, because back then nobody was listening. And the walls here are nice and soft when I bang my head against them.

But now that I'm not down there anymore my stress levels have dropped considerably along with the odds that I would drop dead of an aneurism.

The down side of that is that my blog has become what the investigator called it when he read my stuff. Boring. Nothing more than a personal journal.

Take today for an example:

They made me the Education/Library officer this evening. I wasn't looking forward to it because education is always a pain in the butt. The classrooms are separated between two different buildings; the first and second floor of one building and the second floor of the other. I always worried that something would happen in one building while I was dealing with a situation in the other one.

There would be, of course, multiple locked doors between me and where I wanted or needed to be. And there I would be, fumbling with a huge set of unfamiliar keys and frustration would only make it worse.

There are, in my opinion, entirely too many different locks in this place. I completely understand it from a security standpoint. More locks means more keys which means less of a chance that somebody will be able to work their way through them to escape. But my personal aggravation standpoint bares it's teeth and snarls each time I have to fumble for an unknown key to open a door.

Luckily for me today they closed education early and the classrooms were emptying out as I walked in the door. That was just fine with me. I could close up one building entirely and have nothing but the library to deal with. And it didn't open up again until 6:00pm when the yards opened.

I spent the first 2-1/2 hours of my shift eating my dinner and reading a book. A nice change of pace. The librarian is a nice lady who made coffee and sat outside and smoked with me.

I could work in a library, I think. A real one full of humans, not this one hip deep in inmates. It's not bad, as far as small libraries go. I asked the librarian and she said they had about 14,000 books there, which was a bit startling. It didn't look like that many.

That made me feel like a bit of an amateur, though. Last time I checked our books here at home we had a bit less than 2,000 of them. I don't have room for 14,000 books, but I would like to.

After the library closed at 8:00, I went out and wandered the yard until I ran into the Watcher and I hung out with him for a little while then called Lt Baby Boy and asked him if they needed me anywhere. He just said "Naw! Go out on the yard and find somebody to argue with!"

Heck, I could do that. And I stayed out there for the rest of the shift, pretty much doing what I had done all day, which was nothing. It was a bit blissful. And I almost felt guilty getting paid for that eight hours.

But not enough to give the money back, or anything. Let's not be silly.

Wednesday is Eat What You Want Day and Twilight Zone Day. It's also National School Nurse Day and national Night Shift Workers Day. Huzzah!

Feast Or Famine

On Friday we were so short I didn't get to go home early even though I came in at noon. But it's all good. I got three and a half hours of comp time for it. That will look nice on my paycheck when they do a comp time payout.

Today we were so fat we had four officers and a Sarge out on the yard and they sent us a fifth, the little laundry gnome, when laundry shut down for the evening. On the way inside I heard several people say "There's so many people here! I'm going home!" but nobody did.

Not at first, anyway.

Right about 8:00 pm when we shut down the yards, Sausage said "I'm going to leave here in a little bit. I got lots of stuff to do at home." I thought "Yeah, right." Then I thought "I wonder if he told Sarge he's leaving early?"

He hadn't. He waited until he was almost all the way out and called Sarge on the radio and told him he was leaving for the evening.

There was one thing I was sure glad of this evening. One, that I wasn't the new guy. He got pulled for all of the crummy details and had to run everywhere while I got left to 'watch the yard.' And two, I'm glad I'm not Sausage when Sarge catches up to him next. He's an evil minded old basticule who will probably torture Sausage for days when he gets the chance.

Psychologically torture him ,anyway. They kind of look askance at waterboarding and stuff like that. Not exactly sure why.

One kind of fun thing happened while I was out on the yard, though. They got some new dogs for their program and one of them is a pretty chunky chocolate colored something or other named Hershey. He's a big old teddy bear of a dog. Everyone says he's fat but he's pretty much just alot of dog, if you know what I mean. Probably somewhere around sixty pounds. very friendly.

I was sitting on the golf cart and Hershey came along pretty much dragging his handler and climbed right up on the cart with me and sat down like he was saying "Enough walking! Let's ride!" And he didn't want to get off of the cart. Inmates aren't allowed on the carts except in the case of real medical emergencies and I'm sure I would have gotten into trouble for having a dog riding around with me on one. Even if I had to have his handler running along behind. And while I was trying to get him off the cart peacefully (after quite a few pets and some ear pulls) he turned his butt around and sat down on the gas pedal of the cart and we started rolling down the walk. Almost dragging his inmate handler. Again.

That cart has absolutely no brakes and I had to force my hand down between the seat and Hershey's profound bulk and turn the power switch off to get us stopped again. After that we decided that Hershey could walk the rest of the evening. But every time I passed them in the cart, he started pulling like he wanted back on.

I think he's destined to be a traveling dog.

So Tuesday is Clean Up Your Room Day. Nope. Can't see that happening.

Hmm... I seem to have screwed up my days a little bit. I said Friday that Monday would be Lupus day, Buddha Day and Windmill Day and it's really Tuesday. Now I'm not sure what day I'm referring to or even what day it actually might be. That's what happens when I'm too tired to type! Oh... snap.

Dog Tired

Great googly moogly. I'm pooped. I'm so tired I hit the 'cancel' button on that picture three times by mistake before I could get it to upload.

You would think that only eleven and a half hours at work wouldn't be that bad, but it came down pretty hard on these old bones.

Had to be in at noon for shotgun training, then work a full shift. Earlier in the week, they were letting people 'flex' their time after training rather than have them accrue overtime. But we are so short on Fridays that I knew that wasn't going to happen. And it didn't.

To top it off, I got stuck on 30 yard. Generally, it's a pretty mellow and easy place to work. It's not even really a yard, just a long walkway from 30 house to B-yard, about 50 or 60 yards long. But there's a dogleg in the middle of it that creates a blind spot you can't see into from the house or the big yard, so they stuck a shack the size of your average outhouse at the corner and called it 30 yard.

And even though my zone of responsibility was very small, when you do the 30 yard inner perimeter check, it encompasses 10 house yard as well (since there is no 10 yard officer) so that walk turns into a mile or so after you wind in and around everything and backtrack to get all the gates and whatnot. Fortunately I only had to walk it twice. Once at the beginning of shift then again at the end.

Old age is catching up to me. I don't think I'll be going after the 30 yard spot if it opens up.

So, by your leave, I'll just check the calendar for the weekend and call it good.

I hope you don't mind.

Saturday will be Paste Up Day, and National Roast Leg of Lamb Day. Yum! It's also alot of other things, like Join Hands Day, Kentucky Derby Day, Mother Ocean Day, National Homebrew Day, National Scrapbooking Day and National Train Day.

Sunday will be No Socks Day and Have A Coke Day. It will also be V-E Day, National Red Cross Day, Stay Up All Night Day, National Miniature Golf Day and Mothers Day.

Monday will be Lost Sock Memorial Day, Buddha Day, Lupus Day and Windmill Day.

You have a good day. I'm going to bed.

I've Been Wrong All This Time

Since pretty much nothing other than rain happened today, I thought I might write about something just a little different.

I mean, things happened, they just weren't very exciting. I found a broken padlock that mysteriously fixed itself when it got into someone else's hands. When I was heating up my hamburger I dropped my mustard packet into the ketchup. The parking brake slipped off of the cart and I had to chase it down the hill and pulled a muscle in my back trying to get it stopped again. We all thought there was going to be a tornado when the storm front rolled in, but one never appeared. Sausage chattered at me until my brain tried to chew it's way out of my skull. And it rained on me every time I stepped outside.

But other than that, nothing really happened.

So....

I found out this morning, while doing unrelated research, that I have been using the word 'Hyperbole' wrong all of my life and nobody ever corrected me on it. I was even pronouncing it wrong and no one ever said anything. I always said Hi-Per-Bowl instead of Hi-Per-Buh-Lee, like it's supposed to be.

I do like my pronunciation better. But that's beside the point.

For years I have been using the word in place of the word 'hypothetical'. Saying "In a hyperbole situation like, what would you do if you found a live swordfish in your glove compartment?"

Now that I realize that I have been doing that, I feel really stupid. And I've been doing it for years. Why didn't anybody ever say anything?

I am such a nimrod sometimes.

I guess now that my dirty little secret is out, I'll just go check the calendar then go sulk under the covers. I have to be in early tomorrow for shotgun training anyway. Pfui.

Friday is going to be Beverage Day. Hoist a few for me! It is also Joseph Brackett (?) Day, Nurse Recognition Day, No Diet day, No Homework Day, No Pants Day and Tuba Day.

P.S. I looked it up for you. Joseph Brackett was a songwriter and Elder in the Shaker church. He wrote a song called "Simple Gifts" which apparently got big a hundred years after he wrote it.

Too Much Time On My Hands

It was one of those nights when everything went smoothly up in the comm room. Nothing was lost, broken or misplaced. I got through the inventory amazingly fast and with minimal interruptions. When I went to check the admin building all the doors were locked that were supposed to be locked.

In short, I was bored to tears.

During one of my smoke breaks Vinnie came down and showed me a page of the novel he's been writing at for the last few years. It struck a chord in my brain. Things whirled around in my head and when I got back up to the comm room I sat down at the computer and this came out:

I walked in to find a partial roll of toilet paper laying on the floor. Only one or two squares of it were loose, flapping slowly in the breeze there on the floor.

Who in the hell had left that there?

Where did it come from?

And why toilet paper? What did it mean?

It was incongruous. It was ridiculous. But it gave me a shiver that went all the way to my core like someone had just poured liquid nitrogen down the back of my pants. The kind of chill that is so hard your butt cheeks slam together like you'll never be able to poop again.

I wanted to bolt for the basement and very nearly did before I realized that we didn't have one. The attic was equally fictional. This building only had one floor. Who designs buildings like that? It was insane. What if there was some sort of emergency?

An emergency like the very one I was facing at this moment.

Only one way out of the room. And, as I had missed seeing the roll of toilet paper on my way in, it was now between me and the door. Escape appeared to be impossible.

Think! I had to think! I've read all of those books. One of them had to have a solution. All of those hard bitten detectives who had been in deadly peril must have faced something similar. Battling it out with armed thugs was nothing like this, you understand. But one of them must have faced something almost as dangerous as my present situation.

Suddenly, it hit me!

An idea, not the toilet paper.

I leapt forward, grabbing the errant roll in my hand and winding the loose squares back onto it and stuffed it unceremoniously back into the desk drawer.

That was a close call.

I may have to put myself in for a bonus.

When I finished writing this I decided I would print it out and save it for later. There is no printer in the comm room. The nearest one is down in the control center, which is where I print things anyway.

So I sent it down there. And the following conversation ensued:

Ms Odd: The printer is working. Rev is upstairs. He must be bored.

Sgt Puddle: Yup. Nobody else sends anything up here to print. Must be him.

Vinnie: This should be good!

A few minutes later my phone rings and Sgt Puddle says "Are you okay up there?"

Me: "Oh yeah. Got it under control. I subdued it."

Then Vinnie gets on the phone. "Did you have any further contact with the roll of toilet paper?"

Me: "No"

Vinnie: "Did you receive any injuries from the toilet paper?"

Me: "No"

Vinnie: "Do you need to see a counselor?"

Me: "No, I'm good thanks anyway."

And they spent the rest of the evening leaving partial rolls of toilet paper all over the place, just to freak me out. It almost worked a couple of times.

The bottom line was that apparently I have too much time on my hands. I need a hobby. Or a girlfriend. Or a girlfriend with a hobby. Or maybe one of all three of those. I'm sure my wife wouldn't mind.

So Thursday is National Hoagie Day. There's a celebration you can really sink your teeth into! It's also Cartoonists Day, Cinco De Mayo, International Midwives Day, Martin Z. Mollusk Day and the International Day of Reason.

And just who in the snap is Martin Z. Mollusk?

Backing Up

Even though I had been doing my own backup files on the external hard drive, my new computer decided that it was going to do a scheduled backup this evening, right after I came home.

I explained to it very firmly and decisively that it should be performing this onerous task at 2:00 am on Sunday mornings. At which point it agreed and proceeded to back up my files anyway, pretty much locking up my computer and preventing me from using it. It cheerfully agreed with me to do this at 2:00 am on Sunday mornings, while doing it right now anyway.

We were, it seemed, at an impasse.

I could, of course, use one of the other computers in the house. We have, at present, five of them. All hooked into our wireless network and all quite capable of posting an entry on my blog.

But it was the principal of the thing, you see. I wanted to use my computer and sit in my comfy new chair and have my things about me while I composed whatever opus had sprung unbidden from my brow at the moment.

Of course by now whatever it was that I was going to write about has completely fled my mind and gone off to sulk in a dark corner somewhere. Undoubtedly I will find it years from now when I actually get around to replacing the carpet. I'll find this dried, dead, dessicated, withered up husk of an idea jammed beneath the coats and the stack of monogrammed pillows in the closet and think "What the hell was that thing? Ewww!"

I just sat here, staring at the screen while it went on it's merry way creating another backup file that I will never be able to find again should I need it. Of course should I ever have any computer trouble, all I have to do is locate the nearest ten year old who should be able to fix my problem in no time. I think the kid that works in the local computer geek store is no more than fifteen.

Remember when computer geeks all looked like Jerry Garcia? They all had beards and suspenders and wore sandals everywhere they went? Now those same guys all wear suits by Brooks Brothers and drive BMW's. Sheesh.

So I wasted half my remaining awake time waiting in vain for the thing to get done. In the meantime my sleepy pill was working it's way into my system making my eyelids weigh about ten pounds apiece. I have to keep stopping and slapping myself in order to finish a sentence.

I think I'll stop and check the calendar before I fall asleep on the keyboard and wake up with qwerty face syndrome.

Wednesday is National Candied Orange Peel Day, which just sounds nasty. It is also the Great American Grump Out, Intergalactic Star Wars Day and Respect For Chickens Day.

May the fourth be with you....

The Perfect Spokesman?

I was on my way home tonight, composing my blog entry in my head. I had it all figured out how I was going to write about how they blew a hole in the levee after all because a federal judge said that our 180,000 acres of farmland and 200 homes were less important than a town of 2,800 people and is, from what I've heard, a dump anyway. It sounds to me, from the descriptions, that the place would probably benefit from a good rinsing out.

Anyway.

I was on my way home, like I said, composing my post and listening to the radio with half an ear while I drove and thought.

And this radio commercial comes on for some prescription-strength allergy medicine that is sold over the counter. Claims it will allay all of your allergy ills with one small pill and won't make you drowsy like some of those other medicines.

Their radio spokesman? None other than Alice Cooper.

Seriously.

Would you buy anything based on his recommendation?

Let me rephrase that.

Would you buy anything that didn't come rolled up in a baggie based on his recommendation?

Seriously. They might as well have gotten Keith Richards or even Charlie Sheen to endorse their product.

I'm not doubting the man's talent, but do you think someone who devoted their life to craziness and excesses is a good celebrity spokesman for a drug company? A legitimate drug company?

"Hi. I'm Alice Cooper. Use this product or Satan will move into your underwear drawer and I'll come bite the head off your cat."

I think if I ran into Alice Cooper on the streets and he said "Here, try this stuff, man! It's killer!" I'd probably believe him. But if he came up to me trying to hawk allergy pills as the cure for my ailments I'd just stand there and look at him funny and wonder if I was on Candid Camera or something.

I'm just saying.

Anyway, they blew the levee and we will probably be getting some of those level 5 inmates pretty soon, unless they find some other place to put them until the waters subside. It's going to be a large pain in the butt and nobody is looking forward to the extra hassle and drain on our manpower that this will entail.

That all being said, let's check the calendar, shall we?

Sorry about the rant there. It just struck a weird nerve.

Wednesday is Lumpy Rug Day. It is also National Disabled Pets Day (?), Two Different Colored Shoes Day, Garden Meditation Day, Public Radio Day and Paranormal Day.

Wow. I think I'll stick with the lumpy rug. Got one of those already.