Jodag.NET

We are moving out of Orange County. The house is being packed up, and the plan is to be out by the end of August, then finding a place to live when I finalize my decision on which park to be stationed at. Overconfident in closing up shop down south before I even graduate… maybe? since I almost failed out of the academy today. This is actually the first time I’ve actually been nervous about the possibility of failing out. At various times I’ve thought about dropping for various reasons, but that would be entirely different than failing and being dropped out.

This week is a hectic one, but what we were doing today was EVOC (emergency vehicle operator’s course) training. Driving cop cars around cones type thing is what it boils down to (sample pic). Anyway, on one course (the one I thought was easiest of the three we were tested on) I hit a cone during the test, which means failure. You have one and only one chance only to remediate a failed test. So I practiced a few more times and for some reason was having a bit of trouble with it. Well, knowing that tons of cops out there can’t drive anyway and they’ve been through the same course and passed the same test as this one I decided to go for it again without too much further practice.

I passed, as I’m sure you can guess by the fact that I prefaced this story with the statement, “I almost failed out…” so yeah. but still stressful, since failing would be a pretty good blow to my pride, though I guess I could stand to be knocked down a peg or two, I am a cocky sumbitch.

The fun stuff was slipsliding the car around on the concrete with a solid film of water on it. Good experience, it reminds me of 180′ing my truck on the way to Big Bear a few years back…

Weddings are interesting to watch. If I could just be an observer at weddings I think it would entertain me pretty well. People watching in general is interesting, weddings add a couple twists to that. First of all people are supposed to be on their best behavior and all dressed up. So in some ways it’s on of the few remaining community events that we have in our society, so it’s a bit of an anachronism in that respect. Second, you generally have two pretty distinct ‘factions’ at a wedding, the bride side and the groom side. I think no matter how good the relations are between two families there’s bound to be some conflict at some level. Third you’ve got one of the final aspects of American life that mainstream churches touch regularly.

So, you have relatively large social events with different factions under the roof of an organization that used to dominate our culture but does so no longer. There’s alot of variables right there to entertain someone who’s just there to watch. Add some alcohol into that mix and bling bling, there’s potential for me to be entertained for hours on end just watching the conflicts/resolutions and interactions. But I’d have to get dressed up to get into one so I’m not sure how feasible that entire scenario is in the first place anyway.

So, my academy class has finally gotten the list of vacancies that we are going to be filling after we graduate. What this means is now there are alot of people jockeying around to find out where they want to go, who is above them in rank and where they want to go. Then if possible trying to convince those above them in rank to go somewhere else. I’m in a pretty good spot, ranked 7 or so out of 44 so I won’t have too much of a problem getting a park that I want. The most interesting aspect of this for me then is watching the group interactions as people try to get what they want from people they might or might not like, I like group dynamics, mob mentalities are extraordinarily entertaining to me to try and figure out. It’s almost random, but it’s not. There is some predictibility if you can identify enough of the people in the mob, what their motivations are and how brave or underhanded they are. Watching this class sort out some big issues like which park they are going to get stationed at will be interesting to say the least.

Now all I have to do is pick which park I want to spend the first two years of my career at. If anyone out there has any feedback…http://www.parks.ca.gov/parkindex/ check out the list of all the parks in CA and let me know what and why.

Outside of that, there’s not too much interesting going on outside of the regular old life and how interesting that manages to be on a consistent basis. I wish I had started something like this in the beginning of the academy, so maybe I’ll backtrack a little and do it post-mortem. But this week we handled a suicidal person, a prowler, a robbery in progress, a burglary, a suspicous pedestrian stop and something else that was kinda banal so I forgot it by now. If I was more interested in talking about each of those experiences and how to handle them this is where I would go into that. But I’m not at the moment, I want to get back to checking out the vacancy list.

Just for fun…picture for the loyal

Time to try and get this storytime section back on track and off the angsty shit.

If I could ask God one question (assuming a generic religion neutral Omnipresent/Omnipotent being as God in this) I think I would ask him what babies dream of when they are asleep. They have no concept of self, others, objects, places, or time so what can be present in their dreams? If you watch when they sleep they move, twitch, make faces, and look just like someone who’s dreaming.

So are they dreaming, and if so, what do they dream of? What do they see in the dreams, what does a newborn’s worldview look like? Sure they can’t form rational, or logical thoughts, but who’s dreams are really rational, logical or even make a bit of sense? Do animals dream while we are on the subject?

I remember when my dog Dinkey would sleep in his old age, his legs would twitch like he was running, he would whimper and roll around and then wake up like he was startled out of sleep. Was he dreaming, if so, what did it look like and what was it of? Do babies dream or not, if so, what do they dream of?

God?

This has been a shitty week, thankfully there’s only about 13 hours of it left. I can’t describe everything that is wrong in here, because it is after all a public journal. Anyone reading this knows enough about me to know that I don’t give out personal info easily if at all, but as far as stuff that I can and will discuss:

1) Sunburn, on my scalp, feet and ankles. I fucking hate sunburns because they are so easy to avoid and I know that I get them supereasy… so it’s really fucking stupid for me not to protect myself against them.

2) Poison Oak on my foreams and misc other places. 2nd on my hatred list is Poison oak, because again I’m super-susceptible to it and I know it. FUCK.

3) Backed my truck into a tree. Enough said about that I suppose.

I hope Vu would be proud of me for using the sidelighting correctly in this shot to emphasize the (new) textures of the tailgate. At least I’m learning more about photographic technique eh?

4) Tons of other shit that went down this week.

5) This is the last weekend I have off in August and it was largely wasted by me doing absolutely nothing exciting, new, or exploratory. That’s not like me, and I just have to blame it on 4.

Why am I so whiny lately?