Well, I was able to successfully draft a couple of big strong fellow cops to help me get my fridge, so I once again have cold food and cold beer. And part of the reason I haven't made an entry in a while is because I've been working as many details as possible in order to pay for said fridge. That's one thing I really love about this job: if you have a sudden crisis and need extra money, you don't have to go through the hassle of getting a second job with the associated headaches of scheduling around your first job. It's easy enough to just sign up for extra details for a couple of weeks, make a few extra hundred dollars, and then go back to your normal life.

Today I am not working any details, since I had originally planned on going to a Renn Fest up in Hammond, LA today with my mother. However, the weather is exceedingly yucky wet cold miserable and raw, so to hell with the Renn Fest. They can get Medieval without me this weekend. So instead I'm doing neato stuff like house cleaning. Woo.

Thursday was a lot of fun, though. That was the day that the current academy class had their Redman and Simmunitions exercises, and once again I played a bad guy. I was so sore on Friday I could barely move, though at least I escaped without permanent injury this time. During Redman I once again played a drunk bitch in a bar fight, and ended up in a looooong fight with one of the students. I can't even describe how much fun it is to fight in Redman. Everyone is all padded up, and there are no "sparring rules"--it's just down and dirty fighting at its most obscene. There are plenty of safety observers though, so things stay under control. It's a marvelous stress release, as well as being great training and practice.

I also played a bad guy during the building-clearing Simmunition exercises. This takes place in an abandoned ammo bunker, inside of which a mock building has been created with walls and rooms and furniture. (And when they shut that door, it is black as pitch in there!) In one of the scenarios I was a wacked-out crazy person, armed with a shotgun and a pistol, and the person videotaping the exercise got this fantastic shot using the night-vision feature on the camera of me just walking calmly up to the two officers and totally nailing them.

But the real fun was later that evening when I assisted Slidell PD in their Critical Incident training. This training took place at one of the junior high schools and it was designed to help the offcers prepare for a school shooting incident. There were several of us playing bad guys/victims in this one (though the scenario was a PTA meeting gone bad instead of wacko-teenagers, which makes no difference in the basic tactics for entry and control.) I had a marvelous time doing this one, since for most of them I got to play hysterical victim or wounded person and got to scream and yell and sob and generally carry on. Although in one I played a dead person, which meant that I got dragged across the floor by my wrists while I attempted to be as much limp dead weight as possible. Absolute loads of fun. I sincerely hope I get asked to participate again.

But I was quite sore on Friday, compounded by the fact that I worked a 6-hour detail at the welfare office on Friday--which is 6 hours of sitting in one place and stiffening up. There are times when I really miss the hot tub that Jay and I had in the old house. I was actually already a bit sore on Thursday from running and working out on Wednesday. I hadn't been running in almost two weeks due to me being stupid and pulling a muscle in my back. It's better now, but I took it easy (i.e. didn't run or work out) for a while, and coming back was an invitation to muscle soreness. Still, it was gratifying to see that I could run more than three miles with ease even after that long of a break. I still don't know when the SWAT tryouts are going to be, but I've heard rumors that it's going to be an endurance test more than anything so I especially want to keep up my conditioning up now.

And finally, my opinion on the election: If you're too stupid to figure out the ballot or too stupid to ask for help, your vote doesn't deserve to be counted. Get over it. This election is close enough that whoever gets in will be easily voted out in four years if they turn out to suck. We survived Carter, Reagan and Clinton, so we can survive four years of either Bush or Gore. Let's just make the candidates play rock-paper-scissors and get this shit over with.