You know your a cop when...

Yes I know this have been done to death but hey I can contribute just like the rest of the herd.  So here is a brief list of and in no particular order....

YOU KNOW YOUR A COP WHEN:

• You get onto a crowded elevator and turn slightly so that every eye is on you and you can watch every eye.

• You are the last to get to the table at the restaurant but your the first to sit down because everyone had to get back up so that your seat is against the wall and views the exits.
• Memories of the Fourth of July are not of parades, picnics and fireworks but they are of stupid drivers that would not follow your directions and drunken idiots that just plain couldn't.
• Halloween see above and add little kids running into traffic.
• That at one point in your career the midnight shift guy at the local convenience store is your best friend and you can't quite figure out just what country he came from. 
•  Your regular friends ask you to stop calling at 2:00am to find out how they are because work is slow.
• Waving to your wife when you are going to bed as she is getting up to go to work.
• Having to say, "Ma'am please put your top back on and sit down!"
• The only natural materials to touch your body is when the prisoner wants another blanket.
• On one day you take a class on how to shoot to be deadlier, the next day you take a sensitivity class to be friendlier.
• In the early 90's you were still writing reports with a pen and white-out.
• Your cell phone had voice-mail before your department did.
• Your grandmother had email before your department did.
• That dumpster diving is not a sport but part of your profession
• When times are good no one wants your job, when times are bad everyone tries to take your job.

and finally...sometimes the blue and black of the uniform matches the blue and black on your body.

The Best Things in Life are...Dragonflies

I tend to go through periods of high activity followed by low activity.  I have been letting a lot of things slide lately  such as: Bible study, exercise, my piano/voice practice, this blog, my other writing projects, basic house maintenance and the like.  So I am getting back on board with everything again (I guess everything but sentence structure).

I was sitting with my daughter last Saturday watching my son's soccer game.  The temp was warm but not hot, there was a slight breeze and not a cloud in the sky (thats a rare event in the Midwest).  As I was watching the kids run from one side of the field to anther, I looked up and about two fields away there suddenly was a series of little sparkles, flashing about eight to ten feet up.  Suddenly all around us darting in and out of soccer players and spectators were easily a thousand dragonflies.  I have never seen anything like it.  There were at least two species maybe three buzzing around and then just as suddenly they were gone, only to return about five minutes later.

It became a moment, the time where you can just enjoy the warmth of the sun, the spectacle of soccer, the company of family and the wonderment of nature simultaneously.

It just readjusted my thinking and cheapened all my stresses.  The payments, the job, feuding families, stupid material arguments, all the things that we get caught up in that pull our heads down and stop of from seeing all the beauty and joy that God created for us.

It was a welcomed perspective shift.


I think I saw:  Black Saddlebags (Tramea lacerata) and Common Green Darner (Anax junius)

Luke 12:23-25

²³Life is more than food, and the body more than clothes. ²⁴Consider the ravens: They do not sow or reap, they have no storeroom or barn; yet God feeds them. And how much more valuable you are than birds! ²⁵Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?

Back From Canada

The family and I just got back from Canada in the area of Northlake, ON.  I went without shaving for about ten days, maybe eleven.  Looks like I will never be able to get that handlebar mustache that I always wanted...stupid genes.

It was much needed break with the family with no cellular telephone reception I could not be on call and it still took me three days before I stopped checking my phones.  I can't remember the last time that I was able to sit with my wife and kids and take three hours to put a puzzle together or sit in the lake till it came out of my pores.