A rerun per my July 5th, 2009 note to you all. Edited a hair. Originally posted September 13, 2005. The first part of the rerun is here.
* * * *
The officer spoke into his radio, “I got ‘em.” He kept his hand on his gun.
That didn’t sound good. But I was pretty sure, and I’m certain the other guys (except maybe Roy) were thinking that we were in the midst of come sort of misunderstanding.
Have I mentioned yet that Jeff had an almost-Crocodile-Dundee sized knife sitting on the console between his bucket seats?
We were all leaning up against the car in a line. I was the last one in line and was able to see the other guys get patted down. The officer would approach one of us and say “spread out” and the guy would move his feet farther apart from each other. That is, his toes would remain the same distance from the car and the distance between his ankles would increase. If you’ve ever seen Hawaii Five-0, The Streets of San Francisco, Nash Bridges, Starsky & Hutch — almost any cop show — then you’ve seen this move.
With the guy spread out the officer would run his left hand over the him like you’ve seen on the above-mentioned shows; he kept his right hand on his gun. This method worked well for Jeff and Craig. Then the officer came to Roy.
When the officer said, “Spread out,” Roy backed up a step. So now he was leaning on the car at a more precarious angle. The officer tried “spread out” again and Roy took another step backward, increasing, even more, his amount of lean on the car.
The next “spread out” was accompanied by a kick to the insides of Roy’s ankles — once more, just like you’ve seen on TV. Roy’s feet were so far out from the car when the kick (nudge really) came that I thought he might drop to the ground. It’s a shame he didn’t; it would have been a better story. But it was still really funny (in a Roy’s-one-of-my-best-and-oldest-friends sort of way.)
Roy was not being a smartass. He was just a bundle of nerves.
The officer came to me — standing there in my shorts and a football jersey — and gave me a look over. No patting. Which was fine with me — I’d had that thrill before.
The officer told us we could stand away from the car and we formed a semi-circle. Roy put his hands in the air, Western-movie style, as the officer spoke into his radio.
“Roy,” I said, “You can probably put your hands down. I don’t think he’s going to shoot us.” And Roy put his hands down. But only for a moment and then they were back up above his head.
“Roy. You can probably put your hands down. I don’t think he’s going to shoot us,” I repeated. They went down again. And then back up.
Done with his radio, the officer looked over and said, “Son! Will you put your hands down. You’re enough to embarrass a man.” They came down for good.
The officer then asked what we were up to. Somebody told him that we had come out to swim in the quarry but had decided against it. Jeff was wet from the waist down and, when asked about it, we explained that he had gone in to test the water before we decided that swimming was a bad idea.
Our driver’s licenses were collected and the process of running us through the computer back at HQ started. I remember thinking that this might be interesting — I’d had some professional involvement with local law enforcement (that is, they had been acting in a professional capacity when we became involved) in the past and wondered what the computer might kick out about me.
* * *
I’ll try to get the exciting Frog Gigging Finale up some time this week.
Tags: Frog Gigging
Update: In answer to comments I’ve received on the blog and in my mail – this project will continue through the rest of the school year. The kids will be happy to receive post cards whenever they come in. And, thank you in advance from the kids.
This request comes from WADLL reader, coworker and all-around nice guy Mike O.
Mike’s youngest daughter is in third grade. Her class has a project going on in which they are asking people from all over the country – and the world – to send postcards.
If you are of the mind, have the time, and would be so kind, please send a post card to:
It would be a big help if you’d identify the state/province and country the post card was sent from.
And also write on it: “Hi Alyssa.”
Mrs. Marchi
3rd Grade Class
1061 Waggoner Rd
Reynoldsburg, Oh 43068
Tags: Post Cards
“Do you smell that?” I asked. I’d just walked in from work to find Samson sitting at the computer.
“Yea,” he said, “I think it’s Haydn’s feet.”
“It’s gas,” I clarified, “You and your brothers need to get out of the house.”
And so started an odyssey that would take most of the night and lead me to try to spell odyssey half a dozen times before finally giving up to my spell checker.
The gas company had a guy on-site in no time. I pointed out the hissing spot in the yard that Samson had found and then the gas guy and I poked around the house. He found that the gas was entering through the basement and then, via some actual poking, set up some little vents to allow the gas to escape from the hissing spot instead of following a cavity alongside a pipe (or maybe some old tile or woolly mammoth bones… the house is 100 years old, it’s hard to tell what might be buried in the yard ) and into my basement. 
After the boys and I went to dinner I checked with the gas guy to see how things were going. He told me how he thought things would progress and provided answers to my many questions… the most important one went something like this: “Is this going to cost me anything?”
And it wasn’t. (It would seem I’d made enough of an impression with that question that later, as we were checking another area, he said “Someone may have to come back and do something with this,” and then he paused and continued, “we pay for that too.”)
A few minutes after I returned from taking the boys to the ex’s – they were all willing to stick it out with me but I was worried about them being in an unheated house… almost as much as I was they’d use all the hot water and I’d have an ice shower in the morning – two other guys showed up. One had a backhoe with him.
These are some of the facts we were working with:
- There had been no gas smell before today.
- The city sent me a note a couple of weeks ago that said they’d be doing some sewer work.
- There are big metal plates up and down my street that are covering giant holes someone had been digging.
- There’s a rather new hole very near my home.
- Someone wondered if any boring had been going on.
- The gas company has been putting in new lines on my road.
The backhoe was put into service and made short work of my fence. A bit of my irrigation system came up which caused some puzzlement among the gas guys. “I know,” I told them when one asked me about it, “what’s a yard this small doing with an irrigation system? The previous owner was a gardener and had it put in.”
They finally found the leak. It was not caused by boring, or sewer work or gas-line work. The pipe was old and had simply failed.
Oh. Here’s another conversation I had with the first gas guy as he was checking my system for leaks…
“It looks like one of the lines in the house is leaking. Hopefully it’s the stove or the dryer line,” he said, knowing the stove and dryer I had were electric. “But it could be the furnace or the water heater.”
“My money’s on the water heater,” I said, “I’ve done some work on it and I’ll bet one of my joints is bad.”
A moment later he came out of the cellar. “It’s the water heater.”
Somehow, being right didn’t fill me with the sense of pride and happiness it might have.
Everything was fixed, my furnace was back on (I’ll do the water heater tonight after I check some things) and the backhoe was gone shortly after 1 a.m. The guys from the gas company couldn’t have been better.
Tags: Gas
So, there we were at the Indoor Pool in Surrey, British Columbia (Canada). It’s a nice pool, large, clean and it has a big kiddie pool as well as a hot tub. It doesn’t cost a fortune to get in and the children enjoy going there.
It was probably around 9 p.m. or so and the place had started to empty out. There were the seven of us, a few other adults and their charges, and a group or two of teenage boys.
One of the teenage boys picked up a small ball, something of the right size and weight to be easily heaved from the shallow end of the pool, lengthwise and over our heads, toward the deep end and at a buddy who was walking near the diving boards, and heaved it in just the manner I described. He missed, but it was a darned good throw.
The buddy, as teenage boys will do, picked up the ball and heaved it back.
His throw was not as good. The ball took a curve in mid-air. A curve that kept it from going over our heads and toward his friend and put it on a course that caused it to hit the water toy my new 7-year-old daughter was playing with. This would have put it within a couple feet of hitting her.
Now, you may be thinking that "within a couple feet of hitting her" is not the same as hitting her. And it’s not. But, when you consider that she was a small speck of a person in a rather large pool and that she was nowhere near the intended target, it still seemed a little close.
Ah well. It was just one throw. The kid probably saw that he almost hit a little girl, felt bad about it, and that would be that.
But it wasn’t. A second throw followed. And then a third.
The lifeguard, himself a teenager, was watching and would likely put a stop to it on his own but I decided I’d walk over to his chair and encourage him to stop the cross-pool ball heaving.
As I walked, the teenager near the diving boards picked up a ball. I glanced at the lifeguard; his expression told me he lacked anything in the way of concern.
The teenager’s arm went back and my ire went up.
My ire went up? That has a poetic feel, but I’m not sure that it’s right. The teenager’s arm went back and I got pissed. That’s it.
The teenager’s arm went back and I got pissed. "Knock it off!" I boomed from lengthwise across the pool. For added emphasis, and so there’d be no mistake as to who I was talking to I had my arm extended and was pointing at the kid. "You almost hit my daughter with that first throw. If you hit one of my kids I’m going to be upset!"
My outburst took just a moment or two. The kid sheepishly dropped the ball as Diane, who’d been in deeper water, turned and said, "I had to see who was doing the yelling." It seems I’d caught her by surprise.
A feat I’d repeat later that night.
When I made a killer spaghetti sauce.
You know… I, likely, should have said something like “Please don’t do that” the first time a ball was thrown. Instead, I waited for it to end on its own and when it didn’t got a bit irritated. It’s hard to balance giving teenagers the benefit of the doubt against overall pool safety.
Tags: Pool
A rerun per my July 5th, 2009 note to you all. Edited a hair. Originally posted September 12, 2005.
Let me start this post by saying that growing up I ran around with a pretty tame crowd. A big night for us was renting a gym and playing basketball for a couple of hours. We didn’t cruise around town starting trouble and most of us held onto our Biblical innocence until college — not necessarily by choice, there just weren’t that many girls in the gym (when one of us was taking it to the hole it was typically part of a fast break.)
I looked like the guy your parents wanted you or your sister to date. Which, of course, means I was not necessarily the guy you or your sister wanted to date.
Roy called one night and thought we should all get together and do some frog giggin’.
If you are unfamiliar, frog giggin’ (which will sometimes be spelled ‘gigging’ as I don’t know that I’ll be able to hillbilly up the spelling consistently) is the process by which you enter a body of water with a gig (a small trident — think King Poseidon from Little Mermaid) attached to a pole. You look for a frog and you spear him. You may shine a light in his eyes just before you spear him, I don’t recall. I guess it would make it easier for him to “go to the light” just as he finished his, I-wonder-what-that-is thought (often times expressed as, “ribbit.”)
I can’t say I thought giggin’ was a great idea. It involved sneaking into private property, being in a pond after dark, and getting wet.
As it happens, at least four of us set out. And maybe five or six. Those I recall were me, Jeff, Roy and Craig(?). For the sake of the story we’ll say there was one more. We’ll call him Mike.
I remember driving off somewhere to the golf course we were going to violate. Roy had the gigs held outside the window against the roof of his car in a spear-forward configuration. Even before the giggin’ started we were begging for police intervention.
We arrived at our destination and parked down the road a bit from the golf course. We parked right in front of a big sign that said something like Construction: No Parking. It was midnight — there was no construction going on — we figured we’d be safe.
We started walking to the golf course. On one side of the road was a big rock quarry.
We did some gigging. I’d been wearing sweat pants and Jeff had some sort of long pants on as well.
Frogs in bag we headed back to the cars. As we walked a police cruiser came racing up behind us and braked hard. The officer gave us a look and then sped away. One of the guys asked, “What was that all about?!”
“They’re going to tow our cars!” I shouted.
As we raced toward the cars Roy decided to ditch the frogs and gigs. We weren’t sure what type of license we might need to gig frogs, but it didn’t really matter, we didn’t have any licenses at all. Trespassing at the golf course would probably be frowned upon as in any case. Disposing of the evidence seemed to make sense.
The cars? Ahh. They were safe and untowed. We piled into the vehicles we came in. I stripped my wet-from-the-knees-down sweat pants off. Jeff hit the ignition.
A cruiser appeared behind us, lights flashing, blocking our exit.
The officer got out of the car and told us all to do the same. “One at a time.” He had his hand on his gun.
“Walk behind the car, single file.” He continued, and we obliged. He asked us to lean up against the car with our hands on the vehicle.
The officer spoke into his radio, “I got ‘em.” He kept his hand on his gun.
That didn’t sound good. But I was pretty sure, and I’m certain the other guys (except maybe Roy) were thinking that we were in the midst of come sort of misunderstanding.
Have I mentioned yet that Jeff had an almost-Crocodile-Dundee sized knife sitting on the console between his bucket seats?
I’ll continue this riveting story (ribbiting story … ha! I kill me again) the next time I do a rerun
.
Tags: Frog Gigging
…right?
The next time we put a Republican in the White House, we’ll be invading.
Mind your P’s and Q’s Canada… and I don’t mean your Prince Edward Islands and Quebecs.
Tags: Oil
Let’s suppose you were at an indoor pool in Canada and that you are an Asian male and wearing swimming trunks. (The only reason place and nationality are important as there may be some cultural things going on I’m unfamiliar with, what with me being an American person of English and/or German and/or Swiss descent with an Old French and/or hillbilly name.)
Any way, while we’re supposing, let’s suppose you were sitting on a bench with your back to the wall and that if you stuck your left arm out, before it reached full extension it would pass over the opening to the little nook that had a shower in it that people used to rinse off before getting into the pool and hot tub. So, if you were of the mind, you could stand up, turn left, take less than a step, turn left, take a step, turn right, take a step, and turn on a shower that is obscured from the view of the other pool patrons.
Am I clear that you’re fewer than three full steps away from a shower that would offer a bit of privacy?
I’m going to ask you a question in a minute, so I need you to mentally prepare to get in question-answering mode.
So, there you sit, back to the wall, facing the kiddie pool that’s about 20 feet away from you, and you are next to the shower. Oh, you have a bottle of water with you.
As you sit there, so close to the shower that if you fell off the bench you were sitting on you’d likely tumble into it, you pull the front of your swimming trunks out and dump your bottle of water onto your crotch.
The Question: What the hell are you thinking?
Tags: Pool
“The Americans just won the hockey game’” I said.
“Which one?,” asked Diane.
“The Olympic game. Canada vs. the US.”
“Really?”
“Yep. The score was 15 to 3,” I said.
“Wow. That’s a lot,” she sounded a bit awed which led me to enjoy a moment of self pleasure since, as an American,I’m soooo used to foreigners speaking to me with a sense of awe I often fear I’ve missed my ability to pick it out and sometimes mistake their awe for loathing.
“In overtime,” I added.
“Okay. That never happened,” she said, her awe dropped and was replaced by a tone so full of what-are-you-trying-to-pull you could almost hear the hyphens. “Did they really win?”
And then she started to tell me some hockey facts that totally went by me as I’d started writing this blog post in my head. And, well… it’s hockey.
Not only do they have health care, but this gal has spelled all the words correctly on her sign… and she’s made use of an ellipsis. (And she’s got a pretty good sense of humor.)
[I don’t know who to credit for the photo. I snagged if from Joe.My.God who says it was sent in by one of his readers.]
Tags: Olympics
I had a bit of trouble with a Microsoft Access Query this morning. I was trying to extract Open Sales Order Data from our ERP package in a manner that would cut down on the keystrokes the end-user would have to use to get the same data. To do this I did a DLOOKUP in a Fiscal Calendar table – the user would supply the Fiscal Month and Fiscal Year and the query would get the normal-human-being-looking beginning and end dates.
I’ve used DLOOKUP, often, in the past, but that I haven’t touched in a year or more.
Try as I might I couldn’t get the query to return the data I wanted. As a matter of fact it was returning “0 records.” The problem is the select string is rather long, the text was small on my screen, and a misplaced comma or quotation mark was enough to screw up the whole thing. (Most times Access will warn of a punctuation error. Sometimes it doesn’t. This affects troubleshooting.)
I eventually removed the string in question and decided to get all the records. And those data were wrong… the first record came up with a date towards the end of next month.
I looked at the query and, for the life of me, couldn’t figure out what was causing the bad-date problem.
Having given up I gave a call to the author of the original query and she came down to my office. I showed her the query, and explained that, despite my best efforts I couldn’t get Open Sales Order Data for January 2010.
She paused and said, “Wait a moment. What is today?”
“February 23,” I said, and upon hearing myself say it knew what the problem was. “Ah!” I finished.
“If we had open sales orders out there from January we’d be in trouble,” she said.
She was kind enough not to give me a hard time about it.
A moment or two later I had that data I needed.
It would appear my Access skills, which I use infrequently, are better than my Calendar skills… which I use almost daily.
Tags: Databases
I’d picked Samson up from school and we were on our way to get Jack.
“What’s that?” he said, turning toward me a pointing toward my face.
I took a look in the rearview mirror and said, “Oh. That’s a bit of ketchup. I stopped by McDonald’s on the way to get you.”
“No. Not that,” he said. “What’s that sticking out of your ear? It looks like hair with a glob of wax on it.”
I turned my head to get a look at my ear in the mirror. And you know what? It looked like hair with a glob of wax in it to me too.
And it was. And it came out of my ear as if the hair wasn’t attached to anything.
I’m half a step away from being Shrek.
(At least this answers the question of where the hair goes when I trim the area just outside my external auditory meatus. It doesn’t rinse out in the shower as I’d hoped.)
Tags: Ear Wax
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