Bleh...

Being sick is no fun, especially when there's nobody around to help you feel better...

At least there are only 3 weeks left in what has been a pretty decent semester and then I get to spend a month with the one I wish were here to help me feel better.

Maybe later we can have a Texas - Aussie thing-off.

Ben Folds was awesome! Missy Higgins opend and rocked hard, but then Ben Folds came on and played for 2 and a half hours! It was awesome! He played a lot of stuff off his new album and then came back and played a bunch of his old stuff too! It was incredibly rockin and entirely exhausting, but totally worth it!

Created by yours truly

Fun with the internet

Instead of school stuff (which I should probably be doing), I decided to play around on the internet today. Here's the fruits of my labor:

Courtesy of web-cam-stop-motion-thing

Just a warning: the web-cam-stop-motion-thing isn't necessarily child-friendly.

1964

1980

1982

Courtesy of Yearbookyourself.com

(Thanks for the distraction Michelle!)

Only one pencil was harmed in the making of this blog.

Going crazy

After about a week and a half of being nearly angelic, my dog has gone back to being a terror. She has completely reverted back to her old habits of going to the bathroom in the house, which, since she's being crate trained and housebroken (ideally) using the crate, her crap is spread all over the bottom and sides of the crate. And, of course, all over her. Fun. And the worst of it is, she's still completely precious.

General chaos

Today a massive storm blew through Waco while I was at work. We were warned of the storm by the weather service when it started to come into our county. A little after that, a couple of people, including a deputy, called in to report a twin tornado that was about to touch down out in the county. Fortunately, that tornado never came into Waco, but the storm definitely did. The phones went crazy with people calling in to report power lines going down and starting fires, or lightining starting fires, or trees falling onto the road and all sorts of other crazy things that are associated with storms in addition to all the regular calls. At about 9:30 our systems went down. We couldn't do anything at all with the computers down which, unfortunately, our entire operation revolves around. We had to use the manual entry cards in order to dispatch the officers and that was a bit different but still not too terribly bad. Our phones and radios still worked, so we didn't get to use the badass sat phones that we were given once the storm started to move in, but things were definitely still very different since we couldn't use our computers. Once my relief arrived at about 10:30, I got to leave which I had been told wasn't going to happen because the computers were still down. It was absolutely crazy while I was there though!

I'm a proud daddy!

This morning, Patricia and I took Akira downstairs and then went back upstairs to try to tempt her up. We placed some treats on the first few steps and then sat up at the top to try to call her up. After trying to climb up the first few steps very cautiously, she took a few steps backward and took a running start and made it up the first 2-3 steps! Unfortunately for her, the turn in my stairs threw a wrench into her plans of running the whole way up. So after several more failed attempts, she finally figured out how to keep walking up the stairs! The crazy girl still wouldn't come all the way up though. She would walk up a few stairs from the bend and then turn around and go back down. Several times, she would make it far enough so that she only had a couple of stairs left to go to reach the top and then turn around and go all the way back down. Finally, just as we were about to give up on her for the time being, she made it all the way up! We were so proud of her! Since that time, she has made it all the way up the stairs by herself a couple more times, but she's still a little too scared to go all the way down without help. She'll get there eventually though! I'm so proud of her!

An additional note

One thing I forgot to mention (mostly because I didn't have a pic of it yet) is Akira's bitchin' new tag. It's the coolest dang tag anyone anywhere could have ever found.

Bright and Clear

Today I got a new dog. I have been so excited about getting myself a pet and now I finally have one! Yesterday, Patricia and I went out to get some ice cream, but ColdStone was colsed. Instead we decided to go and look at the cats at the Waco Humane Society. We looked around and found a few cute kittens, but there was this one dog that was just too incredibly beautiful to pass up. We then made several mad dashes back and forth to the Humane Society and my apartment complex to get everything squared away. After a night to get everything squared away and then for Akira (which means bright or clear in Japanese) to get spayed in the morning, we finally got to pick her up! So here's some pictures of my new best friend Akira!

My baby the day we found her. She's a heeler mix, btw.

The camera woke her up.

My inquisitive little girl.

A couple pictures of my girl's hanging out on the couch.

Me and my new puppy.

She was a little groggy after the surgery.

Here's a few pictures of my apartment too:

My bedroom.

Akira's bed in the book nook.

Patricia showing off the stove.

The other half of my kitchen.

The dining area.

My living room. Some of you may recognize the couch.

And the other half of my living room.

1089

In cop land, 10-89 is the code for a bomb threat. Yesterday evening, I received a call from a lady claiming to have found a bomb. Police were sent out to try to determine whether or not it legitimately was a bomb. After a while, the officers that were out there called for more back up as well as the ATF bomb squad. After that the Secret Service and Fort Hood (the local army reservation) were notified of the bomb and their bomb squads were sent out as well. Turns out, they had a pretty serious bomb and maybe even more than one. Also, the guy that lived in the house (who fortunately wasn't there) is violent towards cops and keeps loaded assault rifles and shotguns in his house. So thankfully this ended up being much less worse than it very easily could have been. And I was the one that got to put all of this information into the system!

Here's a link to the news story:

http://www.kxxv.com/Global/story.asp?S=8708157&nav=menu509_3_1

On an entirely different note, I started to work out today! My current goal is to meet the FBI admission requirements. For those of you that don't know, that would include 45-50 sit-ups in one minute, 45-50 sec for a 300-meter sprint, 40-50 untimed push-ups, and a 1.5 mile run in 10:00 - 11:30 minutes. We'll see how long, if ever, it takes me to get there.

And Tracy, just so you know, I'll put pictures of my apartment in my next post.

Wolf spiders eat wolves

This massive spider decided to show up on my bookshelf today. Just for the record, the broom is pulled forward so that the edge of the plastic part is about even with the edge of the bookshelf. Even after being chopped in half by my spectacular aim with a shoe, the thing was still larger than a quarter. Needless to say, i was frightened for the safety of my fingers. Fortunately though, the crisis has been averted and i probably don't have another one in my apartment... yet.

I learned it the hard way...

July 4th and Waco just don't mix well. Half the people in the city were setting off fireworks last night (which is illegal within city limits, btw) and the other half decided to call and report them. Props to you for trying to be a good citizen and reporting illegal activity, but please, don't call back every 15-20 minutes and bitch to me about how slow the police are at responding to your oh so special and unique call about fireworks on the 4th of July. 

Just about every single call last night was about fireworks or something related to that. There were several fires (all started by fireworks), several accidents ("This guy threw a firecracker at my car and made me swerve into a telephone pole!"), and several other people just wanting to know when the fireworks started (9:45). Fortunately, there were still a few non-fireworks related calls to keep it interesting: a suicide threat, a guy stealing steel, and a 70 year old guy who "stole" a lawnmower and required 4-5 officers to stop and cuff him (he actually owned the lawnmower and had for 5 years). And once all the fireworks were over, there was (more or less) a riot in the streets. People that are drunk/excited/teenagers should never be given things that explode. Traffic was awful, people were fighting everywhere, fireworks were still going off everywhere (including under a few cars), etc... downtown Waco was a mess.

And I still didn't get to see any real fireworks.

Hello blogging world!

Today is my first real foray into the glamorous world of blogging. When will I post? What will I post? Will I even post at all? You'll just have to keep checking back to find out...