Greetings & Salutations Is it Friday yet??? Cuz... I'm feeling the need to be at Friday now. Seriously. Not that anything especially trying has happened or anything. I'm just... tired. Ready for the weekend and not having to do stuff on someone else's schedule. I like just being better than just being on someone else's time line. I'm funny like that.  Work Nothing too much going on there. Sam's on vacation... so won't be seeing him this week. Not that I'm sad about that or anything, I'm just saying... he ain't there. Also found out of our part timers, Tyler, has thyroid cancer. He's just a young kid, too. I like him... don't work with him very much, but I do like him. Nice kid, nice looking kid... hope this is something they can get taken care of... cuz he's awful fucking young. Our population is dropping at work, which is good. Had to inmate on inmate assaults yesterday. Nothing going on in my neck of the work woods, though. Only got 11 inmates over there right now. Found out one of the kids in my area is the child of an old nemesis from way back in the day. Once I found out from whence this kid sprang forth... well, it's easy to understand why he's in jail. I used to work security at the state fairgrounds here back in the day. (mid to late 80s) One of our off grounds contracts was this property management company that owned a shit load of capped income housing developments. Apartment complexes and town houses. These places were filled with disabled peeps and despondantly poor peeps. Oh... and the criminal element. You see the drug dealers and what not figured out that if you don't have an "official" job, you're income is ZERO, therefore you qualify for housing... once you're in, it takes an act of God & congress to get you evicted and you can see your wares outta your place. (Seriously... there was a 19 yr old kid, who owned two Mercedes, who lived in this place. Got him busted out to prison though for possess/deliver/sell cocaine. Finally.) Anyway... This kid I have now... his entire family was nothing more than low life scum. His mom was probably... 16 at the time and his uncle 12 or 13. His father was like... 18, I think. (His mother married her own stepbrother... but at that time, they were just siblings... step siblings.) The grandmother & step grandfather were serious alcoholics. Those teens would just run wild... they harassed another tenants and stole shit and generall were a pain in the ass. After a period of time, they decided that I was their enemy (which I probably was, beings as I was there to enforce the rules and what not.) and decided that I needed to have my ass kicked. They weren't the first peeps there to believe that. I got another tenant (not the 19 yr old with the Mercedes, but a different guy) kicked out for dealing cocaine outta his girlfriend's place. (He ended up in prison, too, eventually.) This dude threatened to kill me more than once. I'm not sure he really would've... maybe. But I was pretty good at being very careful around that place. That and I was waaaay smarter than these knuckleheads. The boy I have now? His family? They were actively trying to catch me slipping so they could whoop my ass. They never did, of course. I out smarted them consistently, which wasn't that hard, truth be told. I drove an '85 Thunderbird Elan at the time... two tone care black/dark grey. These idiots found a T-Bird on the property one day, thought it was mine and bashed the fuck outta it with baseball bats. Only problem? It was a solid grey car, not a two tone... so obviously not mine. Dumbasses. (And no... they didn't get into trouble cuz nobody could prove it was them.) I had long before that taken to hiding my car in the garages of empty townhouses when I had to do a walking patrol... so these knuckleheads couldn't find it. Anyway... I saw this kid in my area with that same name and looked up to see if he was related to those knuckleheads and sure enough he is... then I ran all his relatives names last night. All of 'em have rap sheets about a block and half long... which isn't surprising. They're not hard core criminals... it's mostly petty crimes. They're just scum. What amuses me? They're all still living in the same house. Not the same house that they used to live in when I knew them... no... but I mean... they all still live together. Three generations of fuck ups under one roof. (Boy's mom works at a fast food place and the uncle doesn't work... they must mooch off the disabled stepdaddy and the alcoholic mom...) Amazing... 20 yrs later and they're the same as they were back in the day. I don't hold out much hope for this kid I've got. Not like he's got any good role models at home or anything. Nobody in the family is worth two shits. Pretty doubtful that he'll be worth two shits any time soon. Being worthless tends to run in families, you know, and this is at least 3rd generation worthlessness... Feel bad for the kid, though. It's not like he knows any different... Home Not much going on here. My mom's getting a new (different, I should say) vehicle. She has a '99 Chevy Lumina currently, which is a huge piece of shit. It's only got 88k miles on it, which isn't bad considering it's 10 yrs old, but it is a complete Heap O'Shit. I don't know how many times it's been to the shop... many, many... and it needs work now and probably will need more in the future. She wanted to look for something newer, with less miles and in better shape. She wanted a 4wd or an awd, because of our winters here... just so she could get around better. And also a small SUV so she could haul junk around, cuz she's always buying shit that she can't fit in her car. She wanted an Ford Explorer or... for some strange reason, a Kia.   Egads. Now... if you're a Kia owner, don't get your panties in a bunch... but I don't want that shit parked in my driveway, thanks. Personally, I think the things are shit. Garbage... why she was so fascinated with them, I couldn't tell you. No idea. My cousin got one a year or two ago and has had nothing but problems with it... you'd think that'd be a clue... but, apparently not. I took her around to several dealerships... she looked at several Kias and found one she liked. She ended up not liking it because it was a stick. So there ya go. I looked around on the 'net and found one of the dealers a couple towns over had an 01 Explorer Sport with only 57k miles on it... and it was red. Mom really wanted red. So I drove up there to check that out. She'll be bringing it home tomorrow. It's just like my truck (though mine's an 03)... runs great, just turned 58k mi (as we were test driving it)... the dealership's owner actually owned the truck for the past 4 yrs... probably why it's low mileage. My mom test drove it to my town (about 20 minutes from the dealership) and I drove it back. Truck runs great... I was driving at 65 and took my hands off the wheel... left them off for about 3/4 of a mile and the truck just ran down the road... only had to take the wheel again, when the road started to curve a bit. (Wonder what oncoming traffic was thinking as they passed me and both my hands were in the air???  ) The dealership was to put on all new tires (it needed tires) and work the brakes (change the pads & turn the rotars... didn't need it yet, but was going to need it within the next 10k miles or so... I just told them to do it now and be done with it.)... wasn't upping the price on it that much at all (couple hundred bucks) and my mom got a good, inexpensive 4 yr (or 48k mi) warranty that covers... just about everything... as well. All for... $180 a month for payments. Made moms quite happy. She was kinda sad they'd only give her $800 for her Lumina. What'd you expect? I asked her... thing's a piece of shit. They won't even keep that damned thing on their lot, it'll go straight to auction, for sure. Everything works on it and it's clean on the inside. Has some wear... but it's 8 yrs old, you know? It's got some scuffs on the body... but nothing serious. (Mine has too) Hopefully, it'll be a good little truck for her to drive and hopefully, the last vehicle she'll need. Honestly... Not much going on here at all. I've worked some on the vacation photos... more than halfway done, finally. Hopefully, I'll get them finished up soon and I'll be able to post them. Working on that many photos, quite frankly, gets tedius rather quickly. That and I seem to have far less patience for that part of it than I used to have... not sure what's up with that. I love taking the photos, but the other stuff just wears me down... Anyway... I'm going to post this up and go get after some more of those photos... hopefully, I'll be done before too damned long! You all be good. Peace...  | 
