WHAT MADE YOU GRIMACE & GRIT YOUR TEETH TODAY?

Lady Diane does that (Bruxism) she usually wears an appliance (a small plastic device that prevents teeth grinding).

Them suckers are expensive too! They charge $500 for a piece of plastic formed to your teeth.

When my brother got sick five years ago, I started the nasty habit of chewing on my cuticles. This September will mark five years since his passing and I still chew my cuticles. Do it much less now. Hope to be done with the whole business soon.

Aack and sympathy.

You poor dear. I hope they can fix you up.

My grimace comes from something that happened today. I just can't beleive how people can be so stupid.

Some of you may know that I work for the State environmental agency. I'm in a field office and we rotating being on call for spills and such. this morning I got called out on a fishkill in a creek that runs though a park in a medium sized city.

When I got there, I found that a large culvert day lighted into the park and right near the culvert a mysterious yellow cloud was visible. About a dozen dead fish were there. Up stream was a middle school. The stream is actually part of the city' storm water system, so storm sewers from all around the area drain into this creek.

At any rate, I could not find any source for this material. the only thing possible was that it had to have come from the school. It's Saturday, so no one is at the school. I looked in the phone book and couldn't find any numbers for the school or the school district.

So in desperation I called the police dispatcher. they had a list of key holders for the school. she called all of them and no one answered. She called me back to apologize. It was now about 8 PM. the City had pumped out the creek and things were starting to look better so I went home. Home is 100 miles away.

I wasn't home more that 15 minutes when the police dept. called my cell phone. They had gotten a call from one of the key holders. They put me in touch with "Sparky." Sparky said, "I know what happened. We was stripping the floors in the school. Rather than dump the shop vacs out into the mop sink like we told them to do, the guys took them outside and dumped them out into the creek."

Who, in this day and age, doesn't know better than to dump floor stripper into a creek!?! I was dumbfounded! I still am!

Alright, so, mebbe unjustified and petty, but I've gotta screed without putting people off with my "negative energy."

So, I'm on my way out to the low-cost spay/neuter clinic at the Fond du Lac (which is to say, rural, somewhat toothless) Humane Society this morning. I'm driving my own car the 80 miles each way so I can get there ahead of the van and we can get an early start, and to get a chance to meet some of the clients in person.

I'm driving out to this boondock punchline of a town on the rural freeway there -- two lanes in each direction, wide median, no cross traffic, posted speed limit is 65 mph.

I've got the cruise control set at about 72 mph because I got a little ticket in Madison (no big woop, the officer was very friendly and cool, **** happens on beautiful summer days) and I'm trying to behave myself. Where I grew up you were an asshole if you were only driving 10 over on a clear country highway, so this isn't the easiest thing for me.

So, about a mile and a half from my exit I crest a hill, and I guess I speed up a bit because, you know, going downhill, engine compression hasn't slowed the car down to 72 yet, and I spot a member of the local constabulary -- a sheriff's deputy, which, having grown up in a little **** town, makes me think of the guys who only graduated high school because they had to stay eligible to play grab-ass in the shower with the rest of the football players every fall, never left their home town, and used to mow the lawn of whatever Spic-joke-telling redneck managed to get himself elected sheriff, but maybe that's my thing. There's a truck who's been consistently about a 100 yards ahead of me, and he brakes hard when he sees the car, which is about the same time as me. I slow down to the limit (65) which brings me close to the truck, who's now well below 65, and the officer pulls out behind me.

I pull over. The truck does, too. As Deputer Abler (abler than what, I don't know, and didn't think to ask at the time) ambles up to the car, I see him peering at the truck ahead of me, who he eventually waves on. Tells me he clocked me at 75, then saunters back and brings me my ticket. $205.

Two hundred and five dollars for drifting up to 75 on a 65 mph freeway on a clear, dry, beautiful sunny morning. What an absolute ******* dick. And did I mention he had a mustache? For real. Deputy Abler wears a mustache.

******* hayseed cops.

You're talking to me, who got ticketed on the 405 for going 68 in a 65, apparently since my car was a VW. I never forget, no, no. But, pdog, I liked your screed, and agree, ten over could be problem folks clogging up the road, back in the day.

Carry on.

Well, the locals done told me that the county has fallen on hard times ("fallen on? when did they rise above?") and the local constabulary employ the letter of the law where-ever it may be profitable.

Yes, that's true, VW's were much questioned as being safe on the road, not that I much knew about all that, the car seemed to work well, from my point of view back then.

I had another episode, with my boyfriend, later husband, and myself tooling around side streets in my then (you know I've had 13 cars) VW van, when we were stopped on La Mesa in Brentwood. I was showing him the sycamores. Police search, and I must have talked my way out of it, besides that there was nothing questionable in the van.
This is all sort of sad, in that a good client of mine sometime later had a property on that street. Even then, twenty years later, I looked around as I parked.

Now, I wonder at how I agreed to the search. It all happened fast.

Oh, and I'm wrong, those were Moreton Bay Figs. (Or were they, I have some researching to do).

Did VWs get disproportionately more speeding summonses ?





`

I don't know. I don't save all info that interests me. I seem to remember someone saying that was true, but that's conjecture on top of apochraphal, however you spell that.

Yeah; when u mix the 2 together,
what do u get ?

Oh dear.

An ex-beloved of mine had a close friend called Allan....a very attractive, charismatic man...who was a very naughty man indeed, and loved to dice with danger.

One day, he was riding his super-bike in the backwaters of rural New South Wales.

At the time, NSW cops were renowned for their brutality, their super-macho culture, and their corruption.

Of course, he got stopped for speeding.

As the officer swaggered up to Allan, being all macho and such, he asked "All right, where's the fire?"

Allan lifted his visor, batted his eyelashes at the cop, and said, very flirtatiously, "In your eyes, officer."

He always said that the look in the cop's eyes was worth the many beatings and the three days in the local lock-up he endured as a consequence of his decision to tease.

Seeing masochists drool.

being stung repeatedly by a pair of wasps while sweeping the front porch today...

R(got the bastids)P

Awwwwwwww!

Poor baby!!

And I've got a bunch of ant bites. They're just regular old sugar ants, but I react with good sized itchy lumps that take some days to go away. Nothin' horrible in the sense of real physical trouble, but irritating, irritating.

one of 'em got me high on the right ear... that one hurt like hell, the others not so much...