Well, as I'd mentioned in previous entries, Monday, April 24th was the date for my first court case (and co-incidentally, the one for when I got bitten.)

How anticlimactic. I was fretting all weekend about it, and so then on Monday I dutifully informed my Sergeant that I had court, and he told me--and the other 5 people who had court as well--to call the DA's office and put everyone working the streets that day on standby, i.e. have the DA's office call us if our case came up and they needed us.

By about 2pm Monday, I concluded that I wasn't going to get called, which means she either didn't show up for her court date, or she plead guilty. Still don't know which, and I really should call up and find out, just to assuage my curiosity.

Heinously anticlimactic.

I fell off the diet quite a bit this week, and have also not done as well about staying on the exercise portion of the program. I'm on day shift right now, which I've realized is much more difficult for scheduling workouts. I work 6am to 6pm on day shift, and at the end of 12 hours it's just darn near impossible to motivate myself to throw on workout clothes after peeling off the uniform. And my gym is not 24 hours, so I can't exactly go after I've gotten some sleep--unlike the night shift schedule, where I go to bed when I get home at 6am, wake up around noon, and then get a nice workout in the afternoon. I've been trying to get up a bit earlier to do the treadmill, but for some reason, when the clock says 2am, the body wants to stay in bed awfully badly.

However, I did go running at the Academy on Monday evening after work. They have a night class going right now (only 3 days a week--primarily for reserves) and one of the instructors paged me and wheedled me into coming out and running with the class during their PT. It was actually terrific fun and a nice workout--real running is more strenuous then treadmill running, and a whole lot less boring--as well as being really cool to be a not-a-student-anymore.

No real excuse for not working out on Tuesday, other than plain laziness, however, I have a great excuse for not working out today or tomorrow. It's because I hurt.

Ye gods I'm tired. I worked a flagging detail today, i.e. traffic direction around a road construction site. On a straight stretch of road this will generally involve two deputies, who simply take turns letting traffic go through on the one lane still open. However, today's road construction spanned a fairly busy intersection, so there was a third deputy stationed at the intersection directing traffic. Well, we got there at 6:30 in the morning, and didn't leave until 5pm, and I took over the intersection shortly before noon.

Working the "ends" is easy--you can lean on your car until it's your turn to let cars through, and when it is, just wave an arm occasionally to get people to move it along.

Working the intersection is work. Your arms are constantly in motion, you're walking all over the intersection, and you're trying to look everywhere so that you can spot the stooooopid people who can't follow directions before they run you over. I really don't think I'm ever going to get rid of this farmer's tan, especially after 10+ hours in the sun (and yes, I did slather on sunscreen, but I think much of it washed off when we got rained on.) My arms and the back of my neck are a nice deep brown, yet my legs, belly and back still resemble to bottom of a dead fish. Oh well.

And some idiot ran over my lunch. There was an orange cone in the middle of the intersection, beside which I'd carefully placed my gatorade (which quickly became hot gatorade from sitting on the pavement), and then around 2pm the girlfriend of one of the other deputies was sweet enough to come out, take our lunch orders for Wendy's and then deliver lunch to us out on the road. So luckily I was able to eat most of my hamburger (yes, I was directing traffic with a burger in my hand for a short while. I'd have made a great Wendy's commercial) but only about three of my french fries before some stooooopid person ran over the cone, my Biggie Coke, my french fries, and the remains of my hamburger. Bastard!

Oh, but there was a wonderfully sweet woman who, as she was coming through the intersection, paused, rolled down her window, and handed me an ice-cold bottle of Evian. Bless her!

Oh, and I am utterly amazed at how impatient people can be!! At no time did any group of cars have to wait more than 5 minutes, but there were still people turning around to find an alternate route, or honking their horns. I'll tell you right now--after about 6 hours of standing in the sun, when someone leans on their horn, all it accomplishes is to annoy the shit out of the deputy. And when the deputy has the shit annoyed out of them, then have this odd tendency to "forget" how long that particular line of cars has been waiting, and let another line go first.

Not to mention LRS 32:351--Misuse of horn. Oh, how we wanted to write some tickets for that today!! (One of the sergeants did yesterday! Woo!) And I continue to be amazed at how stooooopid some people are, who can't follow incredibly simple directions. Like, waiting your turn. Okay, if you see flashing lights on a cruiser on the road ahead of you, and "road construction" signs around you, and you see cars stopped in front of you, wouldn't you assume that maybe, just maybe, the cars are being stopped for some sort of reason? But it seems there are a number of people who can't grasp that, or assume that doesn't apply to them, because far too many times I had cars whipping around the waiting cars, and charging up the side of the road that was clear for the oncoming traffic. And upon stopping (and yelling at) the drivers, they inevitably responded by saying something like, "I couldn't see any clear directions that you were giving..." That's because I wasn't giving any other than Stop and wait your damn turn, idiot! And yes, I made them back their asses up and get back in line. (Shoulda made them pull over so I coulda ticketed them though, except that there really isn't time to attend to that when there are 50 other drivers being just as stooooopid.)

However, flagging details pay verra verra nicely, far better than regular details. I made about half of a normal 2-week paycheck just today, and so yes, I'm working the same detail tomorrow, though I'm only doing half a day--I don't know if I can take another full day out there right after this one, no matter how good the money is! But cool thing is that we should have this detail for the next couple of months, due to a variety of road constructions scheduled for the area, so I'm sure I'll be able to get on it again. My bank account will appreciate it.

And whoever was 50,000 failed to inform me. So, I'm going to move it up to 50,505. And don't worry, I'm going to come up with a better prize than just a cheesy Junior Deputy badge. ;-)