Month: March 2008

Peculiarity

You know, at this point in my life, I should no longer be shaken by oddity in the world. I mean, in my few years on the planet, I’ve seen a lot of weird sh*t.

But still, life can wallop me with a new one.

This weekend, The Good Man and I were out and about, coming home from an early dinner when we turned a corner on a quiet street near the county hospital. As we crested a small hill in our mild suburban neighborhood, we saw a man walking determinedly up the street wearing a hospital gown with ill fitting tighty-whities hanging out the back (thank god he was wearing them). His plastic hospital bracelet was flapping in the breeze and he was padding along in white tube socks, despite the chilly drizzling rain.

Now this disturbed me. Not just because I’m usually loath to view the tighty-whities of a stranger, but when I say this man was “walking determinedly”, I mean…WITH A PURPOSE. What purpose, I cannot speculate, but when you see someone walking with that kind of purpose, you figure they are up to something, possibly no good. Add to that visage the hospital gown, aforementioned tighty-whities and the darkening night and you have a freak out factor straight out of all those g’damn horror movies I like to watch.

The Good Man and I had a moment of the “what do we do” conversation. We decided calling 911 was probably too much. So we looped back to the hospital and went inside to tell them one had escaped. They said they were aware of it and really, unless the guy was being held for a 5150, there was little they could do.

Now….I’m a Van Halen fan like anyone else. I know what 5150 means! Has to do with but a psych case. Well, ok, so the good news is that the guy was NOT a 5150, right. Ok……

Well, none of this actually made me *feel* any better.

However, as we made our way back home, we turned another corner and AHHHH! There he was again!!

Ok, in truth we saw five police cars and officers standing in the street and what The Good Man and I now dubbed “Underpants Man” standing on the sidewalk holding his gown closed in the back and looking a little wild eyed.

Seeing many of the county’s finest should have made me feel better. But it didn’t. All evening The Good Man and I were peeking out the kitchen window to see if Underpants Man was standing out there, zombie-like. Purpose in mind.

I tend to think of my little neighborhood as quiet and peaceable. And it is, usually. Normally all the folks at county hospital stay there and allow treatment. And I’m fine with that.

I can’t imagine all the things that led up to Underpants Man bolting the hospital.

I hope wherever he is today, he’s got dry socks, fresh tighty-whities and feels safe.

And I give thanks for my own clean, dry socks, chones, and The Good Man to keep me safe.

(You know, I usually end my blog posts with a photo of something relevant…and the most relevant was, of course, tighty-whities. But that didn’t seem, you know, appropriate. So instead, here is a photo of The Feline asleep on my desk to help us wipe that mental image of Underpants Man out of our collective minds, ok? Isn’t she cute?)

Pass the cake!

Feliz Cumpleaños para my blog!

Yup, it was a year ago today that I kicked off my little New Mexico blog, unsure if I was going to make it past a few months.

Here I am one year and 233 posts later, going as strong as ever.

I’ve learned a lot on this road.

Blogging is harder than it looks.

Before I’d get pissy when my fave bloggers didn’t post something every day. Now, I’m a lot more understanding. It’s no small feat to have something to say every day.

Also, it’s made me a bit more microscopic in my view of the world (not like I needed any help in that department). Most everything I see in my life is a potential blog topic.

Even The Good Man will comment, “hey, you could blog about that”.

It’s also given me some writing discipline. I can crank out words, and that’s cool.

More confidence too, in my writing.

And best of all, I’ve met some new online friends who’ve been helpful to me with ideas, suggestions, and support.

Plus it has made my feline an internet celeb! :)

If my blog were a person, I’d give this little one year old a cake and let the face mashing good times begin.

Yay!

Take nothing for granted

I’m sure the young man who planned on mugging 83 year old Bernie Garcia thought it was going to be an easy take. A little old lady pumping gas outside a store in Santa Fe.

But the one thing he didn’t count on was the lady’s tenacity.

As Bernie pumped gas, a whippersnapper leapt out of a car and grabbed at her purse.

From the article:

“With a gas pump nozzle in one hand and her purse in the other, Garcia refused to give in to the male assailant’s effort to yank her purse away— this in spite of her being dragged on her side during the struggle.”

“What happened next was a tug of war between a man in his 20s and an 83-year-old woman who stands 5 feet 4 and weighs 125 pounds.”

“He grabbed my left arm and went for my purse,” Garcia recalled. “He started pulling on it, but couldn’t get it off me because (the strap) was winded twice around my arm.”

She wanted to bop him with the gas nozzle but couldn’t manage it so she sprayed gasoline on him instead.

A bystander pulled up as this was happening and yelled at the kid who he ran off, jumped into a car (that had been stolen in Española earlier that day) and took off.

Police responded quick and the three guys in the car were arrested.

Meanwhile, Ms. Bernie Garcia, my hat is off to you. I don’t know if I could have been that clear headed in the same situation.

“It happened so fast, and I just fought, even though I was scared,” she said. “I just wanted to slap him in the face.”

He deserves at least that.

I always say you gotta watch out for the little ones. Little, but scrappy.

Source: ABQJournal

It’s not just me!

Apparently all my navel gazing might just be “scientific” because, according to yesterday’s ABQjournal, I’m not the only one interested in minutiae.

Click here to read: A Fly’s Mind Not So Simple.

Yes, Los Alamos scientists have been studying how the brain of a common housefly works.

“For decades, researchers have studied how the neurons of flies and other subjects have processed and responded to the world.”

Decades!

Hell, they even took the flies on a little field trip to the woods of Princeton, New Jersey with teeny tiny little electrodes attached to their teeny tiny little heads.

I mean, that’s some good microscopic work!

Now if they could only tell me where all the CalTrain punched numbers go!

Minutiae, day two

Yeah, I’m really on this microscopic thang. Bear with me, it will pass.

Today’s subject of my intense scrutiny is the ticket validator machines for CalTrain.

Here’s the situation. To catch a commute on the train you gotta have a ticket to get ‘er done. Some people do single rides. You buy that day of from a machine at the station. Some people do a monthly pass. You get that in advance (or from the machines). You just flash that to the conductor and it keeps you on the train.

But for many of us, we buy a ten-ride ticket (more cost effective if you ride occasionally, not every day). So in order to get a ride, you have to punch your ticket. So to do that, you slip the ticket into the validator machine and it punches your ticket, stamps date and expiration time (four hours), and cuts off the ride number on the side.

Here, better to go visual on this. Please excuse the crappy iPhone photos.

Here’s what a ten-ride pass looks like:

Note the slots for the rides and you can see the numbers off to the side. You can see that this morning I punched off the number 5.

Here is the validator machine:

And obviously, here’s how it works:

So here’s my question. One of those “you’ve got way too much thinking time on your hands” type of deals.

What happens to all of those punched numbers? I mean, look at the machine, it’s not that big?

A LOT of people punch their tickets every day. And as evidenced by the fact that they are always out of ink, the CalTrain people don’t service the machines very often. So the punched numbers build up in there…I’m guessing.

Where do they go? I assume they stay up there in the red part, but that doesn’t seem like a lot of room.

And when they service the machine, what do they do with the little numbered punchouts? Like confetti in there?

I posed this last night to The Good Man and he patiently suggested that they save them up for the CalTrain New Year’s Eve parties.

But I really am curious. I mean, I suppose they just toss them out, but given that there are, like, 24 stations punching both northbound and southbound riders, that’s a LOT of little punched numbers. It seems like something useful could be done with all of those?

Or am I over thinking it? Don’t answer that…

Because mainly, all this ticket validator scrutiny was just me trying to distract my “no wanna go to work” mind. Succeeded, too, for a little while.

So while you too ponder little numbered confettis, here’s my “art shot”…a glance northbound up the tracks, to help get you in the pondering mood.