Viva Las Vegas

Just got home from Vegas... It was even more awesome this time than the first time I was there...

I told the Mrs. after the first time I was there that I would only change two things in a return trip to Vegas... First, in my first trip, I stayed at the Rio, which is several blocks off the Strip... Because of the second thing I would change, walking from the Rio to the Strip was not very pleasant...which left the option of riding a shuttle provided by the hotel... Lots of people utilized this shuttle, and the return trip to the hotel, in particular, was absolutely barbaric... Too many people for the number of seats on the bus, and it resulted into a near-stampede to get on the bus... If someone had fallen, they’d have gotten trampled... It was ridiculous... So I told the Mrs., next time I go to Vegas, I’m staying on the Strip...

Second, I was there in August... The highs while I was there were consistently 109 degrees... I don’t give a damn that it was a dry heat... 109 degrees is freakin’ hot... There was a breeze blowing that, from our hotel room window, looked like a pleasantly cooling breeze...but as we learned when we stepped outside, it was a 109-degree breeze...much like how I’d envision it would be standing in a blast furnace... So I told the Mrs., next time I go to Vegas, it’s going to be in the spring or the autumn... Definitely not in the summer...

So we stayed at the MGM Grand Hotel, on the Strip, in March... Much better, on both accounts...

We had quite an unpleasant experience with Northwest Airlines, now a part of Delta Airlines, both in the planning stages of our trip and in the flight out to Las Vegas... But that’s another story for another day...

We finally made it to Sin City, and as we walked out of the airport, I found myself cringing in anticipation of a 109-degree sandblasting... Instead, we were greeted by crystal clear blue skies, 75 degrees, and a cool breeze... We waited in a very long line, albeit one that moved extremely quickly, for a taxi, took the $15 ride to the hotel, and checked in... Our room wasn’t ready yet, so we had to kill some time for a few hours... The Mrs. obviously noticed the drool coming from my mouth as I stared longingly into the casino, so she gave the okay, and I was off the Video Poker heaven...

And on my fourth hand, I was dealt four aces... Two hundred bucks...dropped into my lap...with no effort on my part... It was like hitting a home run on the fourth pitch you saw... Unbelievable...

A brief glimpse into the past: the last time I was in Vegas, I took a hellacious beating in the casino for two days, but on Day Three, I was absolutely untouchable... As one of my coworkers who was there can attest, my winning percentage (and totals) on Day Three boggled the mind and defied the odds... I recovered my two days’ worth of losses AND paid for my expenses of the trip with my Day Three winnings...

So when I was dealt four aces on my fourth hand of Video Poker in my return trip, I had visions of paying off the house, putting away enough for college educations for both of my kids at private universities, and buying a little ocean-front cottage for me and the Mrs. somewhere tropical by the time I was done relieving Las Vegas of its money...

As anyone who has ever gambled can probably guess, though, that’s not how the rest of my day went...

If being dealt four aces so early in the day was like hitting a home run on the fourth pitch of the game, the rest of my day was like handing the bat to the opposing team and telling them to take their aggressions out on me...

I could barely even get the occasional pair of Jacks required to break even... Most of the time, all five cards were numbers, possibly one face card, seldom more than two of the same suit... And any attempts to cobble together a straight or a flush were futile... Three-of-a-kind? HA! Keep dreaming, chump! It was brutal... I was thoroughly demoralized by the end of the day...

The Mrs., on the other hand, enjoyed success at the roulette table, thanks to being recently introduced to the game by a coworker... On almost every spin of the ball, she won... When she finally left the roulette dealer in a sobbing heap of defeat, she’d try out various slot machines, often hitting paydirt there, too... Meanwhile, my bludgeoning continued on the Video Poker machines... My brain said that the Mrs. was countering my losses, but the rest of me was damn jealous of her good fortune...

The next day, we decided to walk up and down the Strip and check out the other hotels and casinos... So we headed north on the Strip, starting at the MGM Grand, which is located at the south end of Las Vegas Boulevard...

We stopped at the M&M store... Four stories of M&M’s and M&M merchandise... I’m a bit of an M&M freak, so it was a pretty cool place... Looks like they offered tours, too, but we passed on that due to time constraints... And as tempted as I was to get some M&M’s in all kinds of colors you can’t find in the stores, I wasn’t willing to pay the $13.00/pound price for those colors that taste just the same as the bag of M&M’s I can get at the grocery store for 79 cents... But it was fun to walk through, just the same, so I’d recommend checking it out...

Next door to the M&M store was a Coca-Cola store that we did not visit... I’ve been through the Coca-Cola museum in Atlanta, where Coke was founded, so going through the store in Las Vegas seemed a little anti-climactic, and the Mrs. wasn’t interested, either...

Next stop was the Miracle Mile Shops... That place was COOL!! They painted the ceiling to look like the sky, and the shops were all kinds of neat architecture, so you felt like you were in some exotic outdoor market at dusk... They had a thunderstorm, complete with rain, in part of the mall, and as we ate lunch at a restaurant with overpriced, run-of-the-mill cheeseburgers, we watched a fountain right next to us synchronize with some music to give us a brief but entertaining show... Don’t waste your money at Cheeseburger Las Vegas, though...

On we went, focusing our time and efforts on casinos... Instead of doing a pub crawl, we did a casino crawl, playing a few games in several of the casinos on the Strip...

We skipped the casino at Planet Hollywood, and started instead at Paris, complete with a replica Eiffel Tower and Arc de Triomphe (with, strangely, a Transformer guarding the Arc)... We really liked the layout of the casino there... It flowed well, and it didn’t seem congested... Paris is part of the Harrah’s family of casinos... Apparently, so is the riverboat in Metropolis, Illinois, where the Mrs. and I went nine years ago, because when we went to sign up for a gaming card, they said we had already gotten one in Metropolis nearly a decade ago... They reissued our cards, and we promptly hit the machines...and my losing streak continued... The Mrs. tried their roulette tables, found a chatty dealer that she enjoyed, won a couple of spins, played with house money for a little while, and eventually left with what she started with... Our first impression of Paris was a good one, and it’s tops on our list of potential places to stay on our next trip to Vegas...

The next stop was the Flamingo... I’m guessing it’s one of the older casinos on the strip because it had an old, stale, outdated feel to it... It seemed dirty and cheap... The Mrs. reports that they use cheap toilet paper in the bathrooms... She also didn’t like the predominantly pink lighting... We gambled there briefly, and then quickly continued our journey...

Harrah’s wasn’t too bad, but it wasn’t anything special... The Mrs. liked the purple theme a lot better than the pink theme at the Flamingo... We couldn’t find any nickel Video Poker games (which we had stepped down to after the bath I took on the quarter Video Poker machines at the MGM the day before), but we found a multi-hand poker game that was kind of fun... Harrah’s has a Toby Keith “I Love This Bar”-themed bar (I like Toby Keith and that song), but it didn’t look like much more than a small bar with a bunch of Toby Keith crap nailed to the walls... I didn’t even hear any Toby Keith music coming from it as we walked past...

We crossed Las Vegas Boulevard and went to Treasure Island... That casino was very kind to us... We left there with more money than we walked in with... They had several really cool custom choppers throughout their casino... The Mrs. thought the casino was too dark, with too many browns and earth tones... I guess I didn’t notice because I was finally starting to win a few hands at Video Poker... On the flight home, we sat next to some people who had stayed at Treasure Island, and they said the rooms were recently renovated and were very nice...

Continuing south on the Strip, our next stop was the Mirage... We walked through the whole place and couldn’t find any nickel Video Poker, so we moved on without gambling there...

We were starting to get pretty tired at this point, so we skipped Caesar’s Palace and stopped at the Bellagio just long enough to watch their famous fountains, synchronized to music... They were just as cool to see as they were in August when I was there... We were pretty pooped, though, so we skipped the casinos at the Bellagio and Monte Carlo and went back to our room to prepare for our evening entertainment...

We ate dinner at the Rainforest Cafe in the MGM Grand... For $25 a plate, I expected a lot more than the annoying hostess, crappy service, chewy ribs full of gristle, ridiculous special effects during their “thunderstorm” (basically it was like someone flicking the lights on and off while they played thunder over the PA system), and shameless peddling of their merchandise that we experienced... Avoid that place like the plague... It sucked big time...

After dinner, we saw the Cirque du Soleil Ka show in our hotel... It was really good... I highly recommend it... Just don’t pay full price for the tickets... You can get them through MGM Grand’s website for 25% off... You’re still paying through the nose, but it’s a great show... We were so close to the stage that we had arrows flying over our heads and actors standing a couple feet away from us as part of the show... It was a really impressive performance with great special effects, especially for live theater...

After the show, we hit the casino in the MGM Grand for a little while, and we actually made about $80 on Video Poker and a couple slot machines...which, at the end of the night, we immediately lost on roulette and a particularly greedy slot machine... We went to bed kicking ourselves for not quitting while we were ahead... The Mrs. was also cursing her coworker for introducing her to the pestilence that is roulette...

The next morning, the Mrs. got an earlier start than I did, so she went back down to the roulette tables to win her money back... She came back to the room shortly thereafter, absolutely fuming, and wishing things upon the testicles of her coworker that made me hurt just thinking about it... It was the last time the Mrs. played roulette while we were there...

Once she calmed down a bit, we ventured across the street to New York, New York where we gambled very briefly in their cacophony of a casino... On top of the loud music and loud machine noises, some guy sounding like a radio station D.J. at promotional event was constantly on the PA system, trying to sucker people into some sort of slots tournament... I don’t remember much more about their casino, other than the fact that it was unbelievably annoying...

We crossed Tropicana Avenue and checked out Excalibur... I liked the medieval theme but, like the Flamingo, the Excalibur seemed old, tired, and cheap... The men’s room I utilized was absolutely filthy... It stunk, the trash was overflowing, the urinals were dirty, and even the sinks were dirty... I’ve been in cleaner restrooms in gas stations on interstates... We gambled for awhile--it took a fairly decent amount of time to lose our allotted $10 for that casino--and then moved on to the Luxor...

The Luxor is a giant pyramid, complete with a Sphinx guarding the front... Their casino ranked up there with that of Paris as my favorite casino... As the Mrs. pointed out, the blue theme was soothing and somehow made losing all your money seem okay... I don’t know if they just turned the volume of the machines and the music down, or what, but it was quite pleasant in their casino... They had a large bank of new nickel Video Poker machines, which we spent a large amount of time on, as we didn’t seem to hemorrhage money as fast as we had been at all the other casinos (with the exception of Treasure Island)...

After a couple hours at the Luxor, we walked over to Mandalay Bay... We wanted to see their live shark exhibit but were disappointed to discover that there was a substantial charge per person to see it...and at that point in the trip, both fatigue-wise and money-wise, we decided to save the sharks for another visit... We ate a quick lunch there, then wandered their large jumbled casino in search of nickel Video Poker machines... We were unsuccessful in our search... They apparently wanted us to gamble more than we were willing to lose...

As we walked back to our hotel, we went past the Tropicana but didn’t go inside... The building looked old and kind of run-down, so we assumed the interior would be the same...

Back at the MGM Grand, we stopped at the live lion exhibit and were pleased to find that the lions were finally out... According to one of the signs at the exhibit, lions sleep 18-20 hours a day, and several previous passes by the exhibit had been fruitless...so we were excited to finally see the big cats...

Gambling that night at the MGM Grand was good... Twenty dollars lasted both of us all night long... It’s hard to find a night’s worth of entertainment for twenty bucks, so we were happy...

On our final morning, we had a couple of hours between breakfast and check-out, and because I was finally able to shed the bad joo-joo that had plagued me the first two days, I was able to gamble that entire time without losing a dime... It was getting close to time to catch a ride to the airport when I got a full house on Video Poker that resulted in me breaking exactly even for the morning... I thought that was a good way to end this visit to Vegas, so I cashed out for the final time... And as we rode to the airport, the wind and rain moved in, so we felt like we had timed our trip well to fully enjoy the spring weather in the desert, while escaping the pending storm...

After going through security, I was gathering up my shoes and other belongings when I heard someone say, “How about those Ohio State Buckeyes, huh???” I looked up to find one of the TSA agents gleefully pointing at my Michigan Wolverines t-shirt and reminding me that the Buckeyes have won the past five meetings in football... I came back with a feeble “Just wait ‘til November!” that neither of us really believed, but I thought it was pretty funny to be trading barbs about a Big Ten football rivalry with an airport security guy in Las Vegas... I love sports!

We had an uneventful flight home and will now, no doubt, spend the next few days trying to adjust back to Eastern time after the three-hour difference of Pacific time in Vegas...

The Mrs. enjoyed her first trip to Sin City, and we both want to go back... Everything is outrageously expensive there--except for alcohol, which is free while you’re gambling (other than the dollar or two in tips for each drink that you give your waitress if you hope to see her again with any degree of regularity for the rest of the night)--but if you know that going in, and you know you’re going to lose your ass in the casinos, you can just go there and take it all in...in its unique, grandiose, decadent splendor...

Viva Las Vegas...

Life is Good

Just a quick update on things...

My oldest had a great birthday weekend... She got all the Disney Princess stuff, chocolate milk, cake, dresses, balloons, and time with both sets of grandparents that she could ever hope for...

Our damn dog is with my sister for the week...

My kids are spending the week with Grandmommy and Granddaddy... I already miss them--especially "Boo, Daddy!" from my youngest and "I want {insert whim of the moment here}..." from my oldest--but there is a certain sense of liberation that is quite uplifting...

And why are the dog and our kids gone? Because in the wee hours of the morning tomorrow, the Mrs. and I head out to Las Vegas! A return trip for me... A maiden voyage for her...

Speaking of the Mrs., I'm really looking forward to spending some one-on-one time with her this week... I wouldn't trade my kids for the world, but parenting really changes a relationship, especially if you don't get much one-on-one time... So I can't wait for a few days of doing whatever we want to do and going wherever we want to go, whenever we want to do or go...

Adding to the joy of the beginning of my vacation is the fact that I correctly predicted the Final Four in the men's NCAA basketball tournament... I might actually win the two competitions I'm in...especially if North Carolina beats Michigan State in the championship game... I don't follow college basketball at all... I watched part of one game all season long... I recognize that this is absolutely nothing more than pure luck, but I'll take it...especially as I head to Vegas...

I advanced in the playoffs in my head-to-head fantasy hockey league by the slimmest of margins on the last day of competition in this round... I now begin a two-week-long championship round against the #1-seed, who also advanced... I'm the #2-seed...

Baseball season starts in a week, which I'm really looking forward to, both for the actual games and for the fantasy baseball leagues I'm in...

Last night, my favorite team on the Amazing Race finished in first place again...

Tonight, I won't be sharing a bed with a three-year-old who practices her kung-fu moves on dear ol' Daddy's kidneys and head all night long in her sleep... Again...love her...miss her...but sleep is a rare commodity around here, so I'm looking forward to catching a lot of z's tonight...

So I've hung up my probation officer hat, my daddy hat, and my friend hat for the week, and I'm only wearing my husband hat for the next few days... The sports universe is smiling on me at the moment, I continue to enjoy one of my favorite TV shows, and I might actually get a bit of shuteye tonight...

Life is good...

It's a Dog-Eat-Dog World

I did some home visits yesterday at work... I like getting out “in the field”, as we call it... Beyond being a nice break from being stuck in the office, it’s a valuable method of supervising probationers... We get an idea of their living situation, get to see them in their natural environment, and since the home visits are normally unannounced, we often get a pretty accurate snapshot of their lives...not the fabricated b.s. that they feed us at their appointments in our office...

Yesterday, we were at one house where, as my partner tried to talk to his probationer, the probationer’s annoying little ankle-biter kept barking and barking and barking and barking right at our feet... I kept waiting for the probationer to turn his head so I could clobber that damn dog with my heavy duty Maglite flashlight...but no such luck...

We commonly encounter animals on home visits... Many times, the pet owners are kind enough to put their dogs up without us having to ask, or the dogs are so mild-mannered that they are no issue... The yappy ankle-biter yesterday was an example of a fairly common occurrence, for whatever reasons: people don’t put their animals up, and we’re left with the annoyance of non-stop barking, jumping, crotch-sniffing, and hand-licking... There’s nothing like trying to have a serious conversation with a probationer while a dog sniffs your crotch... We could always ask the probationer to put the dog up, but I’m not a big fan of letting a probationer out of my sight to go into a room where God-knows-what might be stashed that the probationer can use to cause us harm... So it’s a judgment call... If the animal is simply annoying, I generally choose to just put up with it, rather than give the probationer the opportunity to produce a bazooka from another room...

Animals also stink...especially when probationers allow their animals urinate and defecate all over the house...and don’t clean it up... More times that I can count, I’ve had to dodge dog crap and cat crap as I’ve walked through a house... The smell of cat urine is always a treat to encounter, too...especially in the summer...when probationers don’t have air conditioning...or any discernible air flow... I seriously don’t understand how people can live in those conditions...

I’ve had several memorable experiences with animals... Several years ago, I was hooking someone up to home detention equipment... He lived out in the country, and when I got there, I got all the home detention equipment--three large boxes that occupied both of my hands and an elbow that pressed the third box to my side--out of my car and was walking toward the house when I heard a crashing sound in the nearby woods... Out of the woods came a 200-pound Rottweiler... I was caught in no-man’s land: too far from my car, and not close enough to the house to take cover, with the dog gaining ground on me rapidly... My only option was to drop everything and draw my duty weapon as the dog charged toward me... I remember wondering if a 9mm round will do anything to a dog this size other than piss it off... About the time I was beginning to squeeze the trigger and pray that the bullet wouldn’t ricochet off the dog’s head and come back and hit me, the probationer came out the front door yelling, “Don’t shoot my dog!” Fortunately for everyone, he called his dog off, and disaster--either for me or for the dog--was averted... Turns out, the dog was the nicest 200-pound Rottweiler you’d ever meet... But our introduction was a little traumatic...

I was doing a home visit one night with a police officer, and while he was talking to the probationer, I took a look in the bedroom for anything I might find... As I stood a few steps into the bedroom, scanning the bedroom for alcohol, drugs, and weapons, an enormous form rose from the other side of the bed... I let out an involuntary expletive in surprise as the biggest Great Dane I’ve ever seen rose in slow motion and sauntered toward me like some creature out of Star Wars, covering several feet in distance at a time with each stride... I heard the probationer say, “Oh, my dog’s in there”... Thanks for the warning... That dog was friendly, too, but they aren’t always...

During a home visit with another probation officer one night, we got to a house with a long dark driveway full of cars, which required us to park at the end, near the street, and walk several yards to the front door... In our way were four Pit Bulls... As we watched the dogs for a minute or two, my partner asked me what I thought we should do... I decided that we’ll just get out and see how things go with the dogs... Not all Pit Bulls are mean, you know... My partner wasn’t thrilled, but since I’m her supervisor, I think she felt pressured to go along with what I said without expressing her reservations about the plan... I’m not sure we made it five steps out of the car before it became clear that my plan was not a good one... Not all Pit Bulls are mean, but the ones that growl, bare their teeth, don’t wag their tails, form a pack, and start circling you are, indeed, the mean ones... We were able to retreat to the car without being bitten, but my partner didn’t talk to me for about an hour afterwards...

It’s not just the big dogs that are problematic... I have a police officer friend who was bitten by a Jack Russell Terrier... I’ve had Beagles indicate no intention of letting me pass unscathed... And Poodles are about the nastiest little dogs, when it comes to biting...











After the annoying barking dog yesterday, my partner and I encountered a Weimaraner later in the day... Real pretty grey dog with eerie blue eyes... He was real interested in us as we pulled in, and he came running over to the car... Fortunately, his little nub of a tail was wagging, so we were somewhat confident in getting out of the car (plus, he was on my partner’s side of the car, so I was REAL confident getting out)... He was friendly, but his owner never put him up, so we had the dog sniffing our crotches and trying to run between our legs as we climbed stairs...

Good times...good times...

I came home at the end of the day to find that my Chow mix had gotten into the kitchen trash for the 7 billionth time... I normally remember to move it out of his reach before I leave for the day, but I had forgotten yesterday...and he makes us pay dearly every single time I forget...

I used to like dogs... Now, I could do just fine without them...

Meet Ameer Ali

Meet Ameer Ali... He plays basketball for Morgan State University... He's the one in the dark blue uniform... Morgan State recently got their asses handed to them by Oklahoma in the NCAA Tournament... With OU up by 24 points late in the game, Ali decides to flip Oklahoma's Blake Griffin, who is the pillar of the #2-seed Sooners team and who is projected to be the No. 1 overall pick in the 2009 NBA draft (if he leaves school), over his back... Griffin is the one in the white uniform with his legs pointed toward the rafters...

Unbelievable...

Neither one of them had the ball... The ball was nowhere near either of them... I don't know what led Ali to launch Griffin, but I can't think of any circumstances that would make this behavior acceptable in an athletic competition...

Ali was rightfully ejected from the game...

You can watch the video here...

The Sooners won the game, 82-54, and Ali should thank his lucky stars that Griffin was not injured... Ali might not have made it off the court before the Sooner fans in attendance dismantled him...

I don't care about either team, so don't mistake me for a Sooner fan in an uproar over my favorite player being flung through the air and slammed on a hardwood floor... I'm just a sports fan in an uproar over some of the worst sportsmanship I've seen at this level in quite some time...

The Police Helped Me

I was out at a bar last night with some friends, watching basketball... My beverage of choice all night was Diet Coke... On my way home shortly before midnight, I was stopped by a sheriff deputy because I was speeding... When he asked me if I knew why he stopped me, I knew the answer... There was no frame-up or police harassment or pulling-me-over-for-no-reason that I hear so much about from my clientele... I was speeding... I knew I was... I just didn't know that the set of headlights behind me belonged to law enforcement...

The deputy was very polite and pleasant throughout our interaction... We had a nice conversation, during which time he determined that I had not been drinking alcohol... He ran my license and registration, learned that I was not wanted for murder anywhere or driving a stolen car, and he was kind enough to let me go with a warning for the speeding... He wished me a good evening, and ten short minutes after he turned on his red and blue lights to stop me, I was back on my way home...

And that's the end of my story... There's no twist or anything... I just wanted to share a story about a positive experience with the police... It seems that we mostly hear negative stories about the police, and that seems unfair, given the constant service they provide to our communities and the peanuts they are paid for providing this service, often at great risk to their safety and well-being... This deputy was trying to protect my community from drunk drivers late at night on the first day of the NCAA Tournament... I appreciate that... He was nothing but professional and courteous... It was a good experience...

I only wish my kids could have been with me, because I go to great lengths to teach my daughters that the police are our friends, and that they help people... This would have been a great first-hand experience for them to see how a police officer does a great job in helping Daddy slow down...

Thanks, but I'll Worry About My Own Head

Natasha Richardson’s recent death as a result to a blow to her head that she suffered during a ski lesson is a terrible thing, regardless of who she is or what she does for a living... Details are still coming out about what happened, but it sounds like she fell on the bunny slope, seemed to be okay, and later died of bleeding in her brain... An epidural hematoma, to be precise...

As Ms. Richardson’s family, friends, and fans mourn her tragic death, the media repeatedly points out that she was not wearing a helmet while she was skiing... I took that piece of information to have the same intended effect as when you read about someone dying in a car accident and learn they were not wearing their seatbelt... You briefly suck air in between your teeth and let out an all-knowing “hmmm” in disapproval of this poor soul’s bad judgment that led to his or her fate...

Now debates are starting to be had by governments everywhere on whether or not to mandate helmet use on ski slopes...

It’s been a long time since I was on a ski slope, but I never wore a helmet as a kid on the slopes... No one wore helmets, as I recall... Helmets are for Olympic skiers who are rocketing down one of the Alps at 70 mph...not for amateurs on recreational slopes or beginners getting a lesson on the bunny hill...

So I was curious...how many skiers perish as a result of ski-related injuries? I know Sonny Bono skied into a tree and died, and I think one of the Kennedys met a similar fate... And now Ms. Richardson... But beyond celebrities, how big of a problem is a lack of head protection on the slopes?

In my search for answers, I found this article... During the 2004-2005 season, 45 fatalities occurred out of the 5.9 million skier/snowboarder days reported for the season, according to the National Ski Areas Association... Forty-five deaths...in 5.9 million days...

Well, maybe helmets are real lifesavers, then, if governments want to mandate them... The same article says that even though helmet use has increased from 25% seven years ago to nearly 50% in the past two years, more than half of fatalities last season were wearing helmets... This article agrees that helmets lose their effectiveness as speeds increase, they may promote increased speeds by creating a feeling of invincibility in the skier, and some argue that helmets impede peripheral vision...

I appreciate governments’ efforts to protect us, but isn’t it kind of a knee-jerk reaction to mandate helmet use while skiing, just because an actress suffered a freak injury that led to her death? A minute percentage of the skiing population dies on the slopes, and more than half of those people are wearing helmets... It doesn’t sound like helmets are a particularly great preventative measure, does it? And we're really only talking about 20 people a year who die while not wearing helmets... Three times as many people die each year after being hit by lightning...

So why mandate helmets? Don’t governments have more important things on which to spend their time? Thanks, but I'll worry about my own head...

This is my Fantasy World

As if my reality isn’t busy enough, I am also fully consumed by a fantasy world...and this is an especially involved time in my fantasy world...

My fantasies don’t involve women... Not these fantasies, anyway... No, the fantasy world I refer to involves lots and lots of men...

Professional athletes, to be more specific...

I am a total fantasy sports addict... I play in fantasy leagues for sports I don’t even follow...

In case you’re unfamiliar with how fantasy sports leagues work, you get together with several other people, either live or on-line, and through some sort of drafting process, each person puts together a fantasy roster of real athletes in whatever sport your league involves... Then when the real athletes compete, you get points for the statistics they accumulate... The more stats your real athletes accumulate, the better your fantasy team does...

I just began the playoffs in one fantasy hockey league... My other fantasy hockey league is a rotisserie league--where we just compile statistics all season long and don’t play against each other head-to-head--so there are no playoffs... Whoever has the most points at the end of the season wins... I don’t follow hockey at all... I would struggle to name all of the teams in the NHL (or even tell you how many teams there are), I couldn’t tell you what teams are good and what teams are bad, and I haven’t watched a single minute of hockey in about five years... But fantasy hockey is something to do in between fantasy football and fantasy baseball, so I play... In my head-to-head league, I finished the regular season in second place out of 12 teams, so I have a first-round bye in the playoffs this week... In my rotisserie league, I’m in third place out of 12 teams, and barring a miracle or a total collapse in the next month, that’s where I’ll finish...

Fantasy hockey is pretty boring, really... Any given NHL team only plays a few times a week, so most of fantasy hockey is just shuffling guys in and out of my starting lineup based on whether they’re playing or not that night... Maybe once a week, I have to make some sort of strategic decision about starting one guy over another...but that’s about it... And since both of my teams are in public leagues--leagues with other people from all over the country, none of whom I know personally--about 8 of the 12 teams in each league have been abandoned by their owners since about mid-October... Competition is not exactly real stiff in these leagues... I think this is going to be my last season of fantasy hockey for awhile...

I would have played fantasy arena football this winter, as I have in past years, but the Arena Football League had some cash flow and labor problems this year and suspended the season... I’ve also played fantasy NASCAR in the past but quickly lost interest in that... That seemed more like chance than strategy... I could have Tony Stewart in my lineup, but if he hits the wall in the first lap because some rookie tried to drive through Stewart's trunk, the rest of the race is a snoozer for me...

Fortunately for me, the fantasy dry spell is almost over... Fantasy baseball season is right around the corner! I already drafted one of my two teams last week... It’s kind of an odd league... Not only is it pretty odd to draft a baseball team a month before the season starts (any number of injuries, trades, demotions, reassignments, etc. can happen in a month of spring training and the World Baseball Classic), the stat categories are odd, and for the second year in a row, a stat category was added on the day of the draft, which really irritates me... But I just try to look at it as a new and different challenge...

I draft my second baseball team next week in a league that I’m really excited about... It’s a league full of guys I’ve competed with for years in baseball and football, including my brother-in-law and two coworkers, all three of whom are my favorite competitors... They challenge me, and they amuse me with their banter and trash talk on the league messageboard... For the most part, everyone in the league competes throughout the entire season, which can be a challenge in a long baseball season that overlaps football season in its final couple of months... This group of guys is a lot of fun...

And, of course, I’m putting together a couple of NCAA men’s basketball brackets... I have watched about 20 minutes of college basketball all year long... Basketball bores me to tears... I don’t understand basketball, I don’t care about basketball, and I certainly can’t play basketball... I may live in Indiana, but I wasn’t raised here, so I don’t have the Hoosier basketball DNA in my blood... For some reason, though, I love the NCAA tourney... I’m one of the millions who loves it every year when the Southwestern Delaware Polytechnic School for Lepers wins their podunk conference, gets into the tournament, and then knocks off someone like North Carolina... Every year, I fill out a few brackets, and every year, I get completely smoked in the opening weekend because I know nothing about college hoops... But I still have fun...

All the while, I’m keeping an eye on NFL news because I’m in a dynasty fantasy football league--where we keep about half our rosters from year to year--that I absolutely love, so I need to keep up with the off-season happenings... I was also in three other fantasy football leagues last fall, which proved to be too much for me and for the Mrs.... I’ll be cutting back this year... Otherwise, I’ll be drafting an attorney in a fantasy divorce league...minus the fantasy...

So if you’ll excuse me, I need to check out the sports section... I need to know how many goals Alexander Ovechkin scored last night, I need to see how Johan Santana’s throwing elbow is feeling, and I need to decide how North Dakota State is going to fare against Kansas on Friday... I should be done with all of this about the time I need to take my daughters to gymnastics tonight...

I wonder if they have fantasy gymnastics there...

How About Some Truth in Advertising?

I ordered a BlackBerry from Verizon's website on Saturday... There's a story behind why I didn't just get one at the local Verizon store, and it involves a smart-mouthed little turd who works there who twice failed to answer questions I had about their service and who, in the process of being completely useless to me, seemed to take great glee in pointing out what a technological ignoramus I am... So instead of giving the little turd a commission, I ordered on-line... HA! I fixed HIS little red wagon! Damn whippersnappers and their rock-and-roll music...........

So I ordered on-line on Saturday, and used a code for free OVERNIGHT delivery...

Now, I'm not an irrational guy, and I didn't expect any of the fine folks at Verizon or FedEx to work on the Sabbath, just to get my newest electronic gadget to me OVERNIGHT...but I did expect to receive it today...

I got an e-mail on, interestingly, the Sabbath at 5:41pm that my order had shipped... I thought, Yay! Now I can spend Monday night neglecting my family and playing with my new shiny toy (because I'm simple like that)! The e-mail even included a link to click to track my package... Super! I click on it, it routes me to FedEx's website, where I see that my package arrived at the Memphis FedEx facility at 7:43pm yesterday, and at 4:15am this morning, there was the completely useless information of "Shipment Information Sent to FedEx" added, whatever the hell that means... I figure, Memphis isn't too far from Indianapolis... It's not like my toy is coming from Hawaii or the Yukon or Uzbekistan or anything... Surely an OVERNIGHT delivery truck can make it here from Memphis by 3:00pm, the promised delivery time... It's only a 7-hour drive according to MapQuest, and if they had my package in-hand at 7:43pm yesterday, they could do the back stroke and make it here by 3:00pm today... Family neglect, here I come!

...until I go to log off, and my eye happens to catch the estimated delivery date on FedEx's website... It's tomorrow, not today, by 3:00pm...

Now, my brain tells me that it's not the end of the world... It's not like it's a new pacemaker or iron lung or iPod or something that I need to survive, and I'm going to die if I don't get it today... And I didn't pay for the OVERNIGHT shipping...although if I had paid for it, FedEx would have been getting well-acquainted with my mastery of foul language by now... And my family can be neglected tomorrow night, just as easily as they could have been neglected tonight... But my heart is really disappointed...

It's the principle of it that pisses me off... They said OVERNIGHT delivery, dammit! If FedEx can't deliver it overnight, fine... Just call it something else... Call it THREE-DAY delivery... Or SOMETIME THIS WEEK delivery... Or WHENEVER THE HELL WE FEEL LIKE GETTING IT TO YOU delivery... Don't call it OVERNIGHT delivery, though, and then not even try to deliver it OVERNIGHT...

At least I still have the satisfaction of knowing that the smart-mouthed little turd at the Verizon Store didn't make a commission off of me...

Full Circle

My wife, Stephanie, and I just got home from a rare date... Mom and Dad came over to watch the kids for us so that we could celebrate the 10th anniversary of our very first date...

It’s hard to believe that we have been together for 10 years... I’ve never been in a relationship with someone for 10 years, so every day is resetting the record...

As spring approached in 1999, I was just starting to come out of the worst year of my life... 1998 was an utter disaster in all areas of my life, which led to about a six-month stretch of epically self-absorbed and self-destructive behavior that has doubtless shaved a few years off of my lifespan... By the time I rang in 1999 with my sister and some of her friends, I had pretty well worn myself out, and I desperately needed something positive in my life...

On March 14, 1999, I joined several coworkers after work for some drinks at a bar across the street... One coworker in particular caught my eye... She was relatively new to our large department, and I hadn’t had much of a chance to talk to her at work yet... As we socialized at the bar, I discovered that I really enjoyed her company...

The next night, I took her out on a date...

I opted for the safe dinner-and-a-movie route and told her to choose where she wanted to eat, and I’d see what movies were playing... I’m not sure why, exactly, she chose the place that she did (I now suspect it might have been pity on a guy who she knew was struggling to rebuild his life), but she convinced me at the time that her favorite place to eat was McDonald’s, and that’s where she wanted to eat that night... So we did...

Then we went to the movie that I picked: “8 mm”, starring Nicholas Cage... For those who haven’t seen that movie, what I thought was a standard murder mystery turned out to be a movie about snuff films... Snuff films are basically pornos involving bondage and sodomy so extreme that it results in (or at least appears to result in) the death of the woman...all on film... As I recall, the opening scene of the movie was especially graphic... I was absolutely mortified to realize what I had chosen for our “first date” movie and imagining what kind of message it was sending to my date... Amazingly, Stephanie did not take a bathroom break and never return... Perhaps my mouth hanging open in absolute horror clued her in to the fact that this was just as big of surprise for me as it was to her...

She stuck with me through that awful movie choice, through future terrible movie choices (such as the night we stayed in, and I rented two movies--both of which turned out to heavily involve white supremacy themes--from Blockbuster that I had picked solely on who was acting in each movie), through some rough patches as I struggled to deal with old skeletons in the closet, and when I had to work two jobs just to cobble together enough money to afford a pot to piss in... She stuck with me when I inadvertently took the Lord's name in vain in front of her very religious and proper mother...the first time I met her... She stuck with me when we rented our first place together--a poorly-constructed duplex where the rent 9 years ago was $150 more a month than our current mortgage--right next to a sewage treatment facility and a very busy set of railroad tracks... She stuck with me when I nearly starved her to death, working up the courage to ask her to marry me... She stuck with me through exasperating, gut-wrenching, soul-crushing attempts to conceive a child... She stuck with me through all the typical knot-headed things that a thick-skulled caveman like myself puts her through...

And ten years later, we approach our 8-year wedding anniversary, we have two out-of-this-world daughters together, we have a comfortable house in a terrific neighborhood, and I’d say we have a pretty darn good life together... It’s certainly an exponential improvement over my life 10 years and 1 day ago...

So how do I show my appreciation to this woman who has been by my side, through thick and thin, for a decade? On our way to the matinee this afternoon, we stopped at McDonald’s... And what movie did we see? “Taken”, starring Liam Neeson... It was a good movie, but when we learned why the main character’s daughter had been kidnapped--to be forced into some sort of sex slavery ring--and my chin dropped to the middle of my chest, I could hear Stephanie snicker a little bit next to me...

Some things don’t change in 10 years... I still can’t pick a movie worth a damn...

But by God, she’s still with me in spite of it all...

I love you, Stephanie...

Don't Believe the Stereotype

There are stereotypes of who probation officers are and what they do... Those stereotypes used to bother me earlier in my career, but now, 13 years later, when a probationer tells me that “it’s just all about the money” or that s/he “heard in jail that you guys violate 90% of people on probation”, I just chuckle... If only that person knew how many times I’ve requested that the Court find someone indigent at the end of their probation and make hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars of fines, costs, and fees disappear... And since I do a lot of the statistics of the office, I can say with authority that year after year, without fail, we successfully discharge 80% of our probationers...

Because of those stereotypes, though, some people enter their period of probation with an inaccurate view of the probation officer’s goal... It’s a hurdle that we constantly attend training on how to overcome...

I’ve dealt with two people in recent months that have been a reminder of why this career can be so frustrating and disheartening sometimes...and also a reminder of why I do what I do...

The first is a young lady who posted several photos on Facebook of herself with her friends on a number of occasions, violating her conditions of probation in a variety of ways... A couple days after she was released from jail on the probation warrant, a young man from our community was killed in a one-car accident where the driver was allegedly intoxicated... I recognized the deceased man and the driver from photos I had seen on my probationer’s Facebook page... My hopes were that my probationer might see that while she likely thought the probation violation was unfair or trivial or just fulfillment of the stereotype, the true purpose of it was to bring her behavior to her attention in hopes that she could get some help in correcting that behavior before she wound up being the next blood stain on a rural highway in the middle of the night... She, of course, missed the entire point of it, even with the death of one friend and the serious criminal charges pending against a second friend still fresh in her mind...but I continue to hold out hope that the message will eventually sink in as she continues to deal with another PO in our department over the course of the punishment phase of the probation violation...

Interestingly, the driver in that fatal accident had been discharged from probation about two weeks prior to the wreck... I imagine his PO is wishing that his probationer had taken the message to heart, too...

The second person I had been dealing with, unfortunately, lost their life...

These are the types of things that shave years off of a PO’s career... They jade you... It’s part of why burnout is such a serious and prevalent problem in this career (and, likely, in other careers involving law enforcement)... If they don’t affect you as a PO, you should have moved on to a different career before you stopped caring... If they do affect you, you have to hold out hope that what you do makes a difference during those times when you want to choke your probationer, beat your head against your desk, and/or cry...

Every now and then, though, you get that reminder, and it’s all worth it...