This last week started out with meeting some new friends. Monday I was over at the Dunn’s enjoying a delicious (as always) free meal. Ashley is one of two young ladies living with them this year. Since she’s usually at dinner as well on Monday’s, we’ve talked some, and I’ve helped her with some computer stuff. After dinner, she was heading to Starbucks to hang out with some friends and invited me along. Being my usual introverted self, my default response in my head was “no”, but I wisely chose to go against my normal reaction, and instead, said sure. Off we went to Starbucks where, for the first time, I met Paul, Tim, and Alison. Turns out, all four of these folks are pretty much awesome. After sitting at Starbucks for awhile, we headed to the local bowling alley where we played two games. I sucked it up as usual, with a score around 100 both games. As if that wasn’t enough excitement for the evening, we proceeded to head over to IHOP where we spent some more time hanging out and talking. We had an interesting conversation, primarily about our personalities (Tim, Alison, and I are introverts, Paul is an extrovert, and later confirmed that Ashley is in the middle).
The week at work was spent primarily focusing on creating a logo/branding scheme for a newly renamed curriculum for an organization we’re working with. I’ll try and remember to post details on the new logo after the design gets fully finalized. The design isn’t complex, but it was difficult to create an idea for how to make it look good. It was certainly frustrating at times, but I was very relieved to get an idea finally approved on Friday.
Friday night was my first night out officially as a Citizens On Patrol volunteer. I went on patrol with a fellow COPS member and we patrolled Midland from 10pm-4am. We didn’t see anything too exciting happen. My partner drove, so I was the radio operator. I got some good experience on that based on a couple incidents we reported, but for the most part it was a quiet night.
Saturday night, I went out again with a different COPS member, but this time I drove. We went to briefing with the officers at 7pm (when their shift starts) and then headed out until 3am. In that 8hrs, we drove 142 miles around Midland. We did spot one driver who was driving a little weird. He was wandering around in the lane more than most drivers, so we thought he might be intoxicated. We called it in, but before a Midland PD officer could get to where we were, we left the city limits, so our info got relayed to the local sheriff deputies. A deputy caught up with us and pulled the vehicle over. The driver was clean, and to explain his driving, he claimed his truck had steering problems. Unfortunately for him, he doesn’t have a drivers license, so he received a citation and had to have somebody come pick him up from the scene and drive him home. Around 2am, we followed a car from a bar. The driver appeared to be heavily intoxicated, so we reported it, but unfortunately for us (fortunate for the driver), she lived not far from the bar and was able to pull into her residence before the officer could get there.
After getting home from patrol around 4am, I was exhausted. I ended up accidentally sleeping through my alarm and totally missed church. I finally woke up around 1pm. Went over to Steven’s apartment to drop off a PS3 game for him to borrow, and then came back home. I then went to a private residence this past, to attend a weekly Hope for Relationships seminar that’s being taught by a guy from Midland Bible Church. Although I’ve been through the material 2+ times already, there is always more to get out of it, and I haven’t heard this guy teach it, so I’m interested in his teaching style. Unfortunately, he had a board meeting that went into overtime, so he wasn’t able to make it. The above mentioned friends were in attendance, so we decided to head back over to the Dunn’s (they were out of the house) to watch a movie. We ate some food, played with their new puppy, “Coach”, and then watched 500 Days of Summer. It’s an interesting movie. It’s kind of like the TV show, How I Met Your Mother–just in movie form.
Coming home, I saw an ambulance head out on the Loop from Midland Drive. I followed it and discovered it was heading to an accident on Hwy 191 where it goes under the Loop. There was a single vehicle on its side–and a lot of emergency vehicles around. I have no idea what the condition of the driver was.
After getting home, I watched the latest episode of Southland. I just started watching this show a couple of weeks ago, but it is definitely my current favorite show (dare I say, even more so than The Big Bang Theory). You should definitely check it out, if you can.
Here’s a picture I took on Friday with my new 50mm f1.8 lens:
Now it’s 1:00am. I’m not really tired, but I should try and see if I can sleep. Ugh. Sometimes it really sucks to be a night owl stuck in a morning owl world.
