I surprise myself sometimes

A few weeks ago I submitted 5 photos for consideration for the City of Grand Junction 2009 calendar.  I got a letter today telling me that the above shot was accepted, and I am to be paid $200 for it.  I think that's cool.

Hello my children!

Yes, I still blog sometimes.  

My parking enforcement days are over.  Now I can experience the joy of not being hated by everyone in Grand Junction.  I can have friends again!  I can walk down the street with my head held high.  No longer will I drive the Glorified Golf Cart of the Gods.  Now I will drive a regular internal combustion engine equipped vehicle, and I can pollute like everyone else.  Life is good.

I am in the midst of training for my new job.  Today I responded to my first accident, in a car that goes over 25 mph.  I almost got a nosebleed from the speed.  I gave one poor sap a ticket for following too close.  Instead of $10 for a parking violation, he got a ticket worth $112.  That's 11.2 parking tickets (we don't have .2 tickets, but you know, it's a comparison thing).  I got another accident call 35 minutes before it was time to go home, and after that dispatch tried to give me a third one with only 7 minutes left.  After they were reminded of their error, they apologized and gave the call to someone else.  

I think my new job is going to be fun.  Love to everybody! 

I just realized something...

...every time I whip out my camera when I am around Joe and Ashley, Ashley seems to disappear.  I was looking through my photo archives and I don't have hardly any pictures of her, except for her wedding.  Does she fade into the shadows when I take out my camera, or am I too busy taking pictures of Joe and everybody else?  I love her as much as I do the rest of the fam, and she is a pretty girl, so I dunno.  I will make a concerted effort to frame her in my lens more often though, now that I realize what has been going on.  Get ready for it, Ashley!

Hola, Mensos!

I just finished a week of pretty intense Spanish for Law Enforcement, and one of my favorite words that I learned is "menso."  It basically translates to "dumb ass" so I will probably use it a lot.  My class was a 40 hour class that covered basic spanish, verbs, interviews and investigations in spanish, vocabulary, and arrest and control in spanish, the last of which I won't use because I don't arrest people.  I suppose I could be called upon to help another officer with the language when he wants to arrest somebody though.  You never know.

OU plays on TV again today.  They play Kansas.  I hope I'm not disappointed again.  It would be nice if Missouri could beat Texas too, but that is probably too much to hope for.

The NBA preseason has begun, so who do we get to watch here in GJ?  The Nuggets?  Nope.  We get to watch teams like Golden State, Milwakee, Detroit, etc.  The Nuggets are nowhere to be found on my TV.  Mensos!

Our Denver trip to see Joe

Here are a few photos from our weekend trip to Denver.  Joe is on leave from Kuwait, and we met him and Ashley there.  We had a grand old time.  On Saturday we visited an old farm that has been converted into a tourist trap, and we got trapped.  It was good fun.  The best part for Cathy and I was seeing our grandkids and Joe and Ashley.  Jen and Erik, you count too, so don't feel bad.  

I had to come back on Sunday because I am in class all week.  Cathy came home today (Monday) with Travis and Rebecca.  Marian came home with me.  It was a bad football weekend for me.  Both the Sooners and the Broncos lost.  Seeing family overcame that so it was a good weekend.

I'm sitting here waiting....

For Cathy to get home so we can hit the road for Denver and Jen and Erik's place.  It's about 1:44 p.m. and we will be leaving as soon as she gets off work and we get packed up.  We are anxious to see Joe and Ashley again, especially together, and the rest of the fam that will be there.  It's cool that Travis got 4 tickets to the Bronco's game, that I won't get to go to, because I don't get one.  No matter.  It will be a good weekend anyway.  I hope I can tape the Red River Shootout to watch when I get back.

Congrats, Erik for passing the bar!

The picture above is the second one that I hung in City Hall today.  The first one is the aspen grove photo that some of you voted on on a previous post.  I didn't get to use the evergreen shot because my trusty printer decided to be not so trusty  at just the wrong time and ran out of ink.  I couldn't find replacement cartridges in time because, true to form, I had waited until the last minute to get things done.  So, I had to browse through some of my earlier prints and found this one.  I like it and I think it will work fine.  So far, people like it but they also say the aspen grove shot is better.  I agree, but in a pinch you gotta go with what you got.