Cows & free chicken

We begin our story on Saturday afternoon. It is time for us to get ready to leave the house for dinner. Jen asked Austin to put up his Nintendo DS game system. Quick side note, as you all know, everything in our house has a place, and there is a specific place for everything. We assumed that our 8 year old son had done what he was told and went on with our evening.

 Fast forward to Sunday afternoon. My dad, Austin, and I are leaving our house to play golf. We are trying to leave early enough to get lunch and snacks for the day. Austin gets in the back seat and opens the plastic box that holds his DS. He exclaims that his DS is not in the box. We spend the next 20 minutes looking for the DS and do not find it. Needless to say, I am a little frustrated that the DS was not put back in it's proper place where it could be found.

 Fast forward to this morning. For some reason the stress level in the house is high. Austn is not listening to his mother and is constantly antagonizing his sister. Austin's behavior continues to raise the stress level. Then we load up to visit what seems to be the busiest Chick-fil-a in the world. I was not in the best state of mind for the adventure. We get our food and sit down to eat. Austin looks at his bag and with a big smile on his face says "Dad, if we dress up like cows, we can get free chicken". All of the stress melted away.

 At times, it is difficult for me to find the balance between enjoying my children and correcting them. I do not want their memories of childhood to be dominated by remembering me telling them that they are doing something wrong. I want to be their parent and not their friend but I also want them to have my high self-esteem. Just another part of the joys and challenges of parenting.

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Apologies for the extra emails

I started trying out a new web service today. It is called Posterous. It works like this, you email text, audio, video, or photos to Posterous and they post and host the various media for you. I have set up Posterous to automatically update my blog when I send anything in to Posterous. That is why the audio clip and video clip showed up in the blog today. I was trying out Posterous. It seems like it works just as advertised. After I finished my "Here is the rest of the story" blog post, I got a little impatient. I sent it to Posterous, and it appeared there immediately. I then checked the blog, and it did not show up. I waited awhile, checked again, and then sent it again to the blog. The post did not show up again. This time I copied and pasted the post into the blog itself. Then I checked the blog, the same post was there three times. I have the blog set up to email 10 people every time something in posted. So, 10 people received the same email 3 times. My apologies. I was impatient.

 So far, I am liking Posterous. It is very easy to share anything and everything. I like the flexibility to easily post photos and videos. I would encourage you all to check out Posterous. You can post to Posterous from anywhere that you send an email. It is a free service to this point with a paid service with premium features yet to come. You can find my Posterous site at http://will7079.posterous.com/.

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Austin groovin to Rockband

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From the cabin of the Camry

  
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Here is the rest of the story...

A Houston man was attacked and shot, possibly with a pellet gun, while taking out his trash early this morning, police said.

The man was outside around 2 a.m. near the intersection of Driscoll and Sul Ross in the Montrose area when he said two cars pulled, four men emerged and tried to rob him.

When the victim resisted, he reported being pistol-whipped and his shirt was torn off as he fled. As he neared his front door, police said he was shot three times in the back.

The victim, whose name was not released, was in stable condition at Ben Taub General Hospital.

Houston police did not immediately have descriptions of the cars of the attackers.

Chronicle news partner KHOU-TV provided this report.

via chron.com

This is a story in today's Houston Chronicle. It describes events that more or less took place early this morning. They got a few facts incorrect, but conveyed the overall story. Here is what actually happened.

This was my call. It was sent to me as a burglary of a motor vehicle. I arrived to find the victim bleeding from his face and talking to a very drunk woman. Not what I usually find at burglary of motor vehicle calls. I had the dispatcher send an ambulance my way and then asked the victim what happened. He stated that after he put his trash in the trash can, 4 black males (suspects) approached him. They all had guns. The suspects threw him on the ground and demanded money. They threatened to shoot him in the head. He got up and gave them his wallet containing an ATM card, but no cash. The victim made the mistake of looking at the suspects and got hit in the face twice with a pistol. The suspects then got into an argument. It seems one of them wanted to kidnap the victim and force him to get them money from an ATM machine. Other suspects disagreed, and they argued.

At this point, the victim was left with only one suspect who was holding his shirt. The victim decided to make a break for it. He shrugged out of his shirt and started running. The suspect then shot him three times in the back with a pellet gun. The victim kept running and the suspects did not chase. The victim retuned to his apartment complex and got the attention of his drunk neighbor who called the police. This is the description of the suspects given by the victim, 4 black males, all with pistols, in a light or dark small sedan. The description did not really narrow things down very much. HFD then transported the victim to Park Plaza Hospital so that the pellets could be removed from his back.

After shootings, or robberies, or car jackings, or other violent crimes, we usually send the dispatcher a description of the suspects so that she can send that information out to the other units citywide. I did not have very much information to send, but I did it anyway. It read: Be on the look out for 4 black males, in either a light or dark small sedan, armed with guns, took the victim's wallet and shot him three times with a pellet gun. About three minutes after sending the message, I was called over the radio by a unit from another part of town. I called his cell phone, he happened to be the brother of a good friend. He had a small stolen sedan run from him and crash. When it crashed, 4 black males jumped out and ran. They found pellet guns inside the sedan along with my victim's credit card. With the help of a police dog, they arrested the suspects, who were juveniles. They were charged with a variety of felonies including auto theft, unauthorized use of a motor vehicle, aggravated robbery, and evading arrest in a vehicle.

A positive ending to a horrible experience for the victim, one that the Chronicle missed.

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Unacceptable behavior

The British Open took place a few weeks ago. Tiger Woods played in the event. If you do not familiar with golf on TV in the Tiger era, I will enlighten you. If Tiger is playing in the tournament, that tournament will get good TV ratings. If TIger is in the mix to win the tournament, that tournament will get great TV ratings. So, if Tiger is playing, they show him during the TV coverage more than any other player. I estimate he is shown almost twice as much as every other player. This means that a camera is on him constantly. They show his pre-shot routine, his shot, and his post-shot reaction. They show his huge fist pumps after making an important putt and they show him slamming his club on the ground and spewing f-bombs after a poor shot.

In the British Open, Tiger missed the cut in the event (the field of players is divided in half by score after the first two rounds with the bottom half going home and the top half playing the final two rounds for the championship). It was only the second time that TIger has missed the cut in a major championship since he turned pro. As you can imagine, to miss the cut he had to hit some bad shots, and a few horrendous ones. After those shots, he reacted. Those reactions were more severe than I remember seeing from TIger in the past. As hard as he slammed a few of his clubs into the Scottish soil, I expected them to snap in half. He did this on a number of occasions usually while saying a wide variety of curse words, punctuated with f-bombs.

For better or for worse, Tiger is a role model to kids that watch him on TV. The kids watch how he reacts to bad shots. I imagine after watching his reaction, those kids think that it is ok to react that way after a bad shot. It is not.

This brings me to yesterday. I was fortunate enough to play golf with my Dad and Terry. Lately, I have been playing fairly well. Yesterday, I did not play well. One club in particular took the brunt of my frustration. I did not slam it into the ground. My reaction of choice yesterday was to toss/throw the club in anger. I probably cursed one or twice, but no f-bombs. I am sure that I looked like a complete idiot, spoiled brat, jerk, and any number of other unsavory things. My reactions were embarrassing. Sorry Dad and Terry, no excuses, I behaved poorly.

According to fellow officers, at work I am known for being very calm and level headed. I very rarely get excited and am a model of politeness. I am very patient with citizens and the probationary officers that I train. While calling out a chase while driving too fast, I am cool as a cucumber. When unexpected things happen, or after crazy decisions by supervisors, I just move on. But, put me on a golf course and watch me hit a bad shot, and something snaps inside me. I need/hope to get this under control. I am reading a golf psychology book that has helped, but not yesterday.

Austin has gone to the golf course with me a number of times. An amazing thing happens, 99% of the time, I stay under control. Maybe I need to take him with me more often? Or just get myself under control.

Alone for a long weekend

Jen took the kids to Corpus Christi on Thursday to vist her grandmother, Nana. They plan to return on Monday afternoon. That means it is just me and the dog for 4 1/2 days. I am writing this early Sunday morning after 3 days of being a quasi-bachelor. Here are a few of my random thoughts so far.

I love not needing to make the bed until Monday morning. The fact is, I live with a beautiful, but compulsive bed maker. Knowing that I have yet to make the bed will not make her happy. Relax honey, it will be made for your arrival back home.

I do not eat very well when on my own. So far, I have eaten dinner twice by myself. I had an ice cream bar for one and a bowl of cereal followed by Oreos for the other dinner. Lazy sums up those choices.

The house is VERY quiet without the kids running around. I sure do miss the noise.

I have had a little time to kill, and playing Halo 3 has come to the rescue.

Big thanks to my parents and Courtney and Mike for inving me to dinner.

I was able to go to the gym and not feel guilty. Since I work quite a bit, and strange hours at that, I do not like leaving Jen with the kids while I go to the gym.

Avery, our dog, does not like being left alone at home all night. She is a snuggler, with no one to snuggle with at night.

I miss talking to my wife. Cell phones calls and text messages are nice. But I love to make her laugh and I want to see the smile.

That is all for now. Time to get back to work.

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