Tomato Soup

Does anyone but me get cravings for tomato soup? I am having such a craving right now - so much so that I am seriously considering stopping at the store to pick up a can on my way home.  I have such cravings every now and then.

Sometimes I swear my brain knows it is coming down with something because I’ll get intense cravings for chicken noodle soup.  My favorite soups are potato soup and broccoli and cheese soup though I do crave french onion soup every now and then.

When I get a crock pot, I am going to make up soups to bring to work.  I know it is weird to think about eating soup during the summer but I can’t help it - the past two years or so, I’ve really come to love the stuff.  Love eating it with a baguette that I can dip in - scrumptious!

I also get cravings for salads but it irritates me that I can’t make a good salad at home.  I don’t know why but bought salad from places like Applebees, IHOP, and Crispers always taste better then what I get at home.  When I make a salad at Pizza Hut from their salad buffet, it is always so good I have to go back for seconds yet I use those same ingredients at home and it falls flat.

Right now I am about to go pick up my new puppy and then my soup so I can go home to watch tv.  How exciting is that? Not very - especially when I don’t have any new movies to watch so I’m go through my collection trying to find the movie that I’ve seen the least.  It’s a challenge. 

Bee Swarm

Driver’s on the New Jersey Turnpike were surprised to find that not only were their morning commutes marred by traffic jams, pollution, and stress, but also a large honey bee swarm.

Apparently, a beehive being transported to wherever, fell off a truck causing the honey bees to swarm in confusion.  With the growing shortage of honey bees in the world, these people were present for a once in a lifetime event - a bee swarm.

As soon as I get settled in my apartment, I plan to buy bee friendly potted plants to put outside my door to encourage honey bee visits.  it is amazing that losing something so small and irritating can have such huge ramifications here on Planet Earth. 

Sagging Pants

Hooray for Chicago’s Linwood suburb! They have taken the first step to restrict the offensive practice of guys wearing their pants down around their thighs! If you have sagging pants that show in excess of 3 inches of your unmentionables, you can be fined $25 according to the mayor of that city.

Of course, there are groups that say this is offensive to young black men who seem to be the biggest perpetrators of this fashion faux pas.  Personally, I just find it offensive no matter who is wearing them.  I can’t tell you how many times youngsters have tried running across a busy street only to trip or almost trip when their pants drop to their ankles.  How safe is that???

Not to mention that often, when the pants drop, their private parts are a little exposed which equates to indecent exposure.  My own son wore this style in his teens (though his pants never went down below his buttocks) and I hated it back then.

Whatever happened to actual fashion???

Grappling Hook Swallowing Shark

A veterinarian in Australia (yeah, what’s up with all this news out of down under?) put a pipe in a nurse shark’s mouth and then snaked his hand through it to reach a grappling hook the shark had apparently swallowed.  The grappling hook, which are actually quite large, had embedded itself in the fish’s digestive system making it impossible for it to eat.

The shark was spotted by some divers, the handle of the grappling hook sticking out of it’s mouth.  They managed to capture it long enough for the vet to get it removed and treat the shark.  Nurse sharks are historically more docile then most of it’s relatives, however like any animal that feels threatened, it can deliver a nasty bite if it needs to.

The shark was a 10ft long gray nurse shark - which is Australia’s most endangered marine species.  They estimate there is less than 300 left off their east coast shores.  I am very pleased that at least one continent seems concerned about sharks and the possibility of their extinction.  Most people have no idea how much killing a single shark can upset the ecosystem…upset the cycle of life and tip over the apple cart.

Baby Snatchers

What is up with the current rash of baby snatchers? Not only are people snatching babies, but they are cutting them out of the womb.  Kind of disgusting.

The first case takes us to PA where a woman’s body was found at a suspected baby snatcher’s house.  The baby snatcher, who stabbed a woman in 1990 in a plot to steal her unborn infant and tried to snatch an infant out of a hospital days later, showed up at a hospital with a newborn baby who still had the umbilical cord attached.

The woman, Andrea Curry-Demus, tried to pass the baby off as her own but tests revealed the baby was not.  She then claimed she bought the baby for $1000.  A search of the subject’s home revealed a black woman’s body bound with duct tape.  As of yet, they are unable to discern whether the dead woman is the mother of the newborn but there was enough blood at the scene to make them lean in that direction.

According to reports, she pleaded guilty in 1991 to various charges stemming from both incidents then and received 3 to 10 years in prison.  She was paroled in 1998 and began serving a probation.  Guess she should have had to stay a bit longer in jail or been paroled to a mental facility.

Two pregnant black women had been reported missing lately so families were waiting for the body to be identified.  That still leaves one missing…makes you wonder if Curry-Demus has been busier then they think.

The next story derives from Missouri where a woman pleaded guilty to kidnapping a pregnant teenager she met online.  She convinced the girl that she would take her to buy baby clothes but then bound and gagged the girl.  Officer’s responded to the hotel the pair were at for a welfare check only to find the teenager.

They believe, though the kidnapper denies it, that she intended to cut the baby from the teenager’s womb because they found tools to do so in the room.  The kidnapper, Lauren Gash, had registered at “Babies R Us” and had even held a baby shower where friends said she appeared to be pregnant.  She then told relatives a few days later that she had given birth to a baby boy.

The victim gave birth to a healthy baby boy two days after being rescued.  I assume that, during their correspondence online, the victim had mentioned to Gash that she was having a baby boy.

Then I read about a case where a woman tried to snatch a baby right out of the nursery at the hospital.  She actually got away with the baby but authorities caught up with her at her home.

Doesn’t it seem this world is getting stranger and stranger?  Maybe it is just me but between girls throwing their babies away like they are trash, and others kidnapping pregnant women to take their babies…it seems like things in this world are just way too out of whack.

Second Four

The second four have started out with a bang - just what I wasn’t hoping for.  First there was an alarm at one of our facilities, then a vehicle accident with injuries, and trying to scramble to get all the paperwork finished for the evening shift.

The night shift guys are much more patient and more laid back - most of them are veterans though whereas the evening shift has newer people.  We just hired three new officers so don’t know what shift they’ll get going on.  One of the new officer’s is one of our dispatchers so here we are short again.  That really is going to stink once students come back full time and football starts.

Hopefully the rain will keep it quieter then last night - the guards are pretty much finding buildings to wait out the rain so they shouldn’t be calling in every five minutes.

Fort Bragg

It is not a good year to be a female soldier or wife of a soldier stationed at Fort Bragg.  Since January, Marine Lance Cpl Maria Lauterbach was found buried in the backyard of a fellow Marine who was then charged with her murder.  Last month the body of Spc Megan Touma was found in a hotel near Fort Bragg, a victim of foul play with her killer still being at large.

Earlier this month Army 2nd LT Holley Wimunc, a nurse at Fort Bragg, was found dead and her husband was also charged in her murder.  Now, Pfc Jeneesa Lewis and her husband have gone missing from their apartment.  When officer’s arrived there, called after the Pfc failed to report for physical training, found evidence of foul play and fear the Pfc will become the fourth woman this year to have met an unsavory fate.

One would think that these women, being combat trained, would know how to handle their spouses - but remember, most of the spouses were also combat trained.  Besides, aren’t you suppose to be able to trust your mate?  Of course, we can’t know yet who killed Touma but they seem to link her death with the fact that she was pregnant.  As a matter of record, both Touma and Lauterbach were pregnant - maybe they mention this fact more to outrage us then to suggest a link to their deaths.

At any rate, I’m thinking all the women stationed at Fort Bragg and those married to servicemen stationed at Fort Bragg, might want to have mental health checkups done on their significant others.

Assisted Colonization

Well, we knew it would all come down to this eventually. Afterall, we humans are the smartest of all God’s creatures and thus, colonizing the animal world in our own way should be how it was meant to be right?

Not only should we colonize the creatures how we see fit, we should also decide in an animal kingdom triage sort of way, what species we should let become extinct in favor of keeping other species around in this world of shortening animal habitats. Doesn’t that seem normal to everyone?

Scientists have advised that the species of Sky Island in Arizona is basically “toast” because they don’t know where they would move them so might as well let them go extinct. Who needs them anyway?

“When deciding which species to save and which to watch die, Root said one key is uniqueness. That’s why she said she’d save the odd-looking Tuatara of New Zealand, a lizard-like creature with almost no living relatives, over the common sparrow.”

“The risk of extinction has to be balanced by the potential hazard to the community where a species is relocated as well as the time and cost of making the move, Parmesan says.”

“Ultimately, the decision about whether to actively assist the movement of a species into new territories will rest on ethical and aesthetic grounds as much as on hard science,” she said in a statement.

“Passively assisting coral reef migration may be acceptable, but transplanting polar bears to Antarctica, where they would likely drive native penguins to extinction, would not be acceptable,” she said.

“Conservation has never been an exact science, but preserving biodiversity in the face of climate change is likely to require a fundamental rethinking of what it means to preserve biodiversity,” Parmesan said.

Wow, doesn’t it just make you proud to be a human? And, by the way, whose to say penguins are more unique then the polar bears? I think that is subjective and totally unfair. Let’s relocate the penguins to Alaska or Canada - let the bears have the Antarctica.

Somewhere I’m sure someone has a nice little chart with nice little diagrams of how every thing would benefit if we took over nature. Let’s make the world one big zoo. Does it irk anyone else as much as it does me??

I understand that some species are endanger of becoming extinct but is moving species around a good idea? Shouldn’t we let Mother Nature handle, well, Mother Nature? Have we done much good when we have “accidentally” relocated things in the past? Fire ants spring to mind - they came over from Africa or some such place - now look at how they’ve become an epidemic in the south.

Pretty soon I won’t have to watch the Sci-Fi channel to get my “b” movie horror fix - the reality of what we’ve done to our world will far out due what they can come up with on TV.

Dishes

By the way, I’m most happy to report that since moving into my apartment - my dish obsession has completely vanished.  Don’t know what it was all about but I’m glad it is gone.  Now I don’t care what kind of dishes I end up with - just as long as they don’t break or chip and a person can eat on them.  {sigh}

I must also say, I don’t want to have anymore obsessions like that again because it was truly mind-boggling.  No, maybe mind-numbing would be a better description.  But, thankfully, I’m back from the edge of the abyss pretty much none the worse for wear. 

Busy Night

What a busy night! So much for a nice quiet one - this one was anything but.  We made three arrests, went on two fights, and did countless other things in between.  I’m worn out.

I got a little ticked at one of the newer officers tonight and talked to the LT about it.  The officer went “out” with a vehicle but gave no license plate information.  I got backup going right away but had the driver of that vehicle decided to shoot my officer before backup got there, I would have had no information on the vehicle the officer pulled over.  Yes, backup arrived quickly but still - it is standard operating procedure for the officer to give the license plate BEFORE even approaching the vehicle.  When I asked him for it, he told me to “standby” and then never gave it to me.  The second officer gave me the information when he arrived - he happened to be the LT.

Sure, chances of something happening are slim but isn’t that usually when disaster strikes? When we are least expecting it? Just irritates me.  The officer hadn’t even ran the plate himself yet soooo…had he been gunned down they couldn’t even have looked at the last plate he had ran.  Just disturbing to me.  The LT agreed and said the officer made several other mistakes too that he would address with him - one was letting the scene get out of control, something this newer officer has struggled repeatedly with since finishing the academy and training.  He is new but again, isn’t that when bad things can happen? He has to be able to maintain control or he has lost the battle.

Now I have all three officers out on a suspicious person at one of the ramps.  Such an eventful evening.

The city should start waking up here shortly - already the street sweepers are out sweeping the main streets clean for another day of hustle bustle.  It truly is amazing, when I have time to watch, seeing the city go to sleep and then wake back up.  It is two so totally different crowds too.  At 3am it is the college students headed home in their skimpy outfits, walking none to steady.  At 5am it is the business crowd in their suits, walking briskly and with a purpose totally lacking in the younger groups.

The rain seems to have retired though forecasts reveal it will be making a comeback all day today.  So much for it being too rainy for people to get into trouble.

I must say once again, it sure would be fantastic to be so rich I wouldn’t have to go to work each day.