Friends in Low Places

I had to help my sister with something for the police academy. The Cadets are currently doing the DWI portion of the training program. Clearly you can't learn about the effects of alcohol on the human body without some human bodies. I volunteered to allow the FWPD to serve me alcohol and use my body as a subject in the DWI training. The evening started out with all volunteers being weighed in and the trainers mixing drinks according to a scientific formula. (blood alcohol content=BAC and is reported as grams of alcohol per liter of blood.) The goal of the evening was to have a room full of volunteers with differing blood alcohol content for the cadets to test. The evening progresses interestingly enough. Some people were very inebriated. The person with the highest blood alcohol level ended up @ our table. I won't name names but I think you will know who it is from the pix. I was asked not to photograph officers or cadets @ all, and I could only take photos of people with their permission. I walked to each table before the first drink was consumed and asked if I could take photos and BLOG this. Not one person in their sober state denied my tiny request. They all wanted the website name. I passed it out to some of the cadets.

@ the end of the night my final blood alcohol content was .97. I was legally intoxicated. Julie's BAC was greater than mine I think. I believe I have a picture or 2 of Jules in her highly intoxicated state. I can always tell when Jules has had a little much bc she begins to...talk! I have pictures of Julie talking. We had a blast and I think the cadets found it fairly easy to tell who was drunk and who was not. Apparently the pen test is designed for you to fail, period.
Here is a link to BUSTED: The Citizen's Guide to Surviving Police Encounters

Each volunteer had a DD for the night so there were no worries about us breaking any laws but everyone should know their rights. We had a good time.
Usually the trainers have board games and what not for the drunks, er um, volunteers to help pass the time. For whatever reason, there were no games last night. We made our own. We played tally the curse words of our drunken table mates and harass thee officers assigned bathroom guard duty! There were officers assigned to watch the restrooms in case we tried to sneak something in or out I guess. Someone pulled out a fake million dollar bill...I don't know, people are crazy after a properly formulated drink. The picture that shows everyone sitting in a group of chairs in the center of the room was when the sobriety tests began. I had to stop shooting then since the cadets were the ones testing and I was ask not to photograph them.

After it was all said and done, we went to Ol' South Pancake House. Damn, you want to go there? I don't have my letterbox clues! (Yes, there is a letterbox there!)Jess went on to explain to us how the sobriety tests work. Verrdddyyy interesting.

Thank you for being a friend

I am going to run out of songs about friends! I have some pix in my camera now from this week. These are from last week! Thanks Christa for sharing your house with us.

Fun with words...

We had some of our friends over this afternoon to hangout and play with the girls. Since Mady is almost 10 and most of the friends she normally hangs out with are friends she made @ school she usually ends up talking to the grown ups. Mady often pops up with random statements in the middle of a conversation. I am glad she feels comfortable enough to join in. I am easily distracted though and with all the little ones around, I often loose track of what we were talking about!

Something I found entertaining was when Momma Duff and I were talking, while the kids were climbing on the parallelogram playhouse, we had some questions about the word moose and its plural form. Just for anyone that maybe curious, the plural form of moose is moose-spelled and pronounced the same for each form, which is what we thought. Meeses??? Not a word momma!

Here's to toy firetrucks and wagon rides on sunny January days in Texas!

What's up with MySpace?

Do you use MySpace? I joined it bc my cousin uses it and it is convenient for us to chat using it instead of phones. Did you get on there and then get e-mails from long lost friends? I haven't been on the damn thing a week and I got a friend request from an old school buddy (we will call "L" we have actually know one another since we were 11!) I approved it bc I was curious about what L wanted and after all, you can block them later if you wish. What I got from the e-mail was L wanted to apologize to me for something L had done 8 years ago! Something I didn't even recall. The first thing that went through my mind was "Are in you AA?!" I had to laugh while I was reading. After L apologized, for the apparently blatant disrespect which was displayed toward me, and if you knew L you would know L does not behave that way @ all, ever, L proceeded to tell me about life since then. It made my heart happy to know L is doing well and is in a good place.
One has to wonder though, why did this old flame contact me? He was (maybe still is) a truly virtuous boy and if anyone should apologize, it should be me. My behavior was far less than virtuous toward this young boy. So I will take it @ face value and let it go. L recalled a bizarre memory he had of us for me in a message he sent which in turn led me to think of past times we had.

To L I would like to say thanks for the bowl of popcorn with M&M's and Pulp Fiction. To this day I love Quentin Tarintino films. I am watching Kill Bill Vol 2 on my new flat screen in bed with Dom as I type.

Good times.

C'est la vie!

New Year's Eve

I know some of you are curious to see the pix from New Year's Eve. Let me just say, I didn't take many pix and if I had they would have been blurry...if they weren't blurry it wasn't me taking them bc I was slightly inebriated and honestly I had a very enjoyable night. What did I learn? When you take a picture of blue silly string stuck to the ceiling, unless you have an awesome camera, you can't really see it in the pic! What did Niki learn? I hope Niki fell asleep before she learned too much!

C'est la vie!

Christmas @ Our House...

was CRAZY! OK. I could go on and on about the day but I will spare readers and let those of you interested know I have added a link to YouTube where you can view short snippets of the day. These of course are all taken from my point of view.

Some of my favorite things this year were:

Meeting my cousin Danniell from Michigan for the first time!
The framed puppy drawing from Mady!
All the family having the best Christmas ever!

When I opened Mady's drawing I just couldn't help but tear up. Mady has been taking art classes for a couple of months. She seems to enjoy it a great deal and I know she has learned more than I imagined she would. The puppy drawing Mady gave to me was a drawing she had done in the art class. When she showed me the drawing after class the day she had done it, I realized you can "learn" art, it's not ONLY a natural talent. I was truly impressed by it. So when I opened the box Christmas morning and saw the framed puppy drawing I couldn't help but tear up with the thought of how much she has learned...and grown.

I can vividly recall the Christmas Mady was 2 in a room piled with pink gifts that Mady never seemed to come to an end of. She ripped the gifts open as fast as she could, threw them down without any comment and on to the next one. That year she was given a Barbie Power Wheels Jeep, yes pink, which she seemed scared of. It wasn't until Niki was 2 that we got our money's worth from it. This year Mady was given some personal grown up girl gifts for Christmas. I can't believe she is growing up so fast. Mady is the sweetest, most tenderhearted, thoughtful little girl I know. I hope I am doing all I can to encourage her to continue growing in the same way.

Merry Christmas!

3:07 AM Post Turkey Day

Did anyone do Black Friday? Thanksgiving was great @ our place. I am still trying to sift through pix and see what I want to post. I am also trying to find a way to add a slideshow to my blog. I do not have the Microsoft Office Suite on my computer so I have to find an alternate way. I am slow to search.

My dad and I were on a mission to purchase a top of the line laptop from Best Buy. Best Buy was running a special for an almost top of the line laptop for $299.99! we live in a small town so we thought we need only arrive slightly early to stand in line to get our laptop. When we arrived @ Best Buy, 45 minutes early, a line had been formed and already doubled back around the building! OK, we laughed our asses off and hopped back in the truck. Papaw, my dad, decided we could log on to see if there were any online specials. On the way to the computer we happened by Wal Mart! Papaw says lets check it out. It was 3:07. Once in Wal Mart we discovered there was a laptop going on sale @ 5am, better than the Best Buy's, for the same price! There was no one in line for it. We waited. By 4am someone else was in line behind us. 5am we purchased our laptop and ran to the truck to go home for a nap! Why do this? Was it such a great deal it was worth loosing sleep over? Yes and yes. We waited in line for a mere 2 hours to save $658.98!

The best part for me was just being there with my dad, Papaw as he is known to my kids. He has worked hard all his life, like most dads no doubt, but he has played hard too. My dad is a fisherman. You would never catch him in a store if he weren't purchasing fishing equipment, NEVER! Christmas time in years past, my dad paid me and my sister to complete all the shopping. He actually commented he had a fun time hanging out waiting around @ Wal Mart @ 3 AM with me and that it was well worth it. I agree. My sister has requested a laptop for the previous 2 years @ every gift giving occasion and now we will all witness her face Christmas day as she unwraps a laptop she has longingly coveted. I can't wait! That is the stuff memories are made of.