Well, I've done it again--gone nearly a week without an entry. I can't really use the excuse that I've been overly busy this past week this time. In fact it's really more the opposite--it's been so laid back that I haven't felt that I've had much worth putting into a journal. I worked Wednesday and Thursday--and much to my delight I was assigned to one of the busier zones in our district. Very gratifying, to have been given that zone by myself, and nice to see that my higher-ups have that kind of confidence in me.

I continue to become inured to the sight of gore. Had an incident the other night with a guy who tried to kill himself by putting a shotgun in his mouth and pulling the trigger. I say tried because he was unsuccessful--at the last minute he must have turned his head slightly, because instead of blowing the back of his head out, he merely blew off the side of his face. And then he got up and walked back home, leaving part of his face still lying in a pool of congealing blood--skin, bone fragments, and something we were fairly certain was part of his eye. You'd think there would be distate, nausea, horror... but instead everyone on the scene turns to humor. I won't go into the details of the jokes made (I can just see family or friends of the victim stumbling across this someday and freaking out!) but I can assure you that they were all in the poorest of taste, completely lacking in compassion, and utterly necessary to the situation. In a scene like that, humor is a vital outlet. I'd never really realized how vital until I found myself--and I've always rather considered myself to be a fairly decent, compassionate person--laughing as loudly as the rest at the imitation of a man with no face and part of a tonuge trying to talk.

I went to the range today to watch the reserve academy class practice firearms. I stayed over two hours and crispy-fried my shoulders--which in a way I was pleased about since it finally evened up the dorky farmer's tan that I've been sporting since I started the traffic details. Worked another one of those on Friday, but luckily it only lasted three hours, and luckily it was one of the easy ones where I got to stay in my air-conditioned car most of the time and just follow heavy machinery around. The big drawback to that, though, is that at the end of the detail I had an amazing amount of road oil, tar and dirt on my unit, which took the better part of an hour to remove on Saturday.

Hmmm... this entry is rather non-chronological...

Only other thing going on is something in my personal life which I don't want to go into in this public forum.

(Don't you hate it when people do that? "I have something to say that I'm not going to say!" I mean, if we don't want to talk about it, why even mention it? Go figure!)

Anyway, it's a good thing--which is maybe why I wanted to at least mention the existence of it. A really nice, good thing.

Okay, I'll stop.

I went to the library the other day and put a hold on a couple of books that I'm interested in reading--some new SF/F stuff that's out. I've turned to the library a great deal lately since my budget became "constricted." (And fortunately the local library is a good one that is quick to get the latest releases--in all genres.) So I get the notice in the mail telling me that my books are in, and I dutifully take the notice down to the library and ask for my books. And I am consequently told that my books are in--at the Mandeville branch of the St. Tammany Parish library system. (Mandeville being about 20 minutes away, and I have no idea where the library is in Mandeville.) So, I had to request that the books be transferred to the Slidell branch (which I thought would have been done in the first place, since I put the request in at the Slidell branch. Go figure.)

Oh well, so I have to wait a few days more. Still cheaper than buying them.

Damn, but I wish that I'd had the spending habits I have now back when I was making the big paycheck! My bills would all be paid off!