Kenny Pawski

My neighbor's son was just involved in a fatality accident at Sand Lake this past weekend. Her son is in ICU with some pretty serious injuries. According to the news articles online alcohol may have been a factor. Online there are places to make comments on the articles. People are just vilifying my neighbor's son and saying horrible things. Which brings me to Kenny Pawski. Kenny is the young man/kid who hit our son-in-law head-on up in the hills. First reports said alcohol may have been a factor and boy the fun began. Friends of Jason's were vilifying Kenny. They were out for blood. Checked his myspace page and said it was proof that he was drunk. I saw his myspace page before Kenny took it down and there was nothing on there about getting drunk ever. His myspace page was extremely tame compared to a lot that I have seen. Tanya was asked by some friend what they should do with their "evidence" in regards to the prosecuter. She has been advised by so many people to sue this 19 year-old kid. Tanya had learned that if he was convicted of vehicular homicide (due to the alcohol) he would only get three years in prison and that made her angry. I'm not sure what she feels he deserves.
I'm sure that any time in prison is not the correct answer. My opinion is just my opinion and the laws are the laws so if something comes of this...it will be up to the law, lawyers and judge. I absolutely do not see how sending a kid to prison is going to do anyone any good. Won't bring Jason back and will certainly ruin a kid's life who is already serving a life sentence of his own. Anyway that said it turns out Kenny was not drunk. He did have a minuscule amount of alcohol in his system (which at his age is illegal, but not a factor in this accident). Says to me he probably had partied earlier, like the night before. Probably slept for awhile and then woke up and realized he needed to be home...work....someplace. And that is when he made the bad decision to speed on that road and then took that corner too fast. But he wasn't a drunk driver...he was a kid who made a poor choice and now lives with it forever. And all those people who were vilifying him were wrong.

More Wildlife

So at about 3 a.m. I hear the bathtub noises. It usually means that one of the four legged members of my family has an animal trapped in the bathtub. So I get up and check. Mica had a bat in the tub. Every time it tried to fly out she would bat it back down. I got Dave up and he rescued the bat and gave it a toss outside. My bathtub has had more critters in it than people.

Amusings

My week started off on backpack checking/security. That means I got to stand at the front door of the bookstore and make sure no one brought backpacks/bookbags into the store. I also got to direct people to the return area and check receipts for bags coming out that beep. I hate the beeping part. So I get a beep and it is a woman with a bag and a man in a wheelchair. I'm pretty sure he beeped and she just left. So I stop him and he tells me he didn't buy anything. Then he moves a sweatshirt on his lap and there is a keyboarding book under it. It isn't dawning on me yet just what is occurring, so I go to get the book off his lap and ask about his receipt when he gets a little snide and says "Don't panic, I'm going back in and pay for it". And he did. I was just flabbergasted. Wow. I didn't expect that.

Yesterday another interesting thing occurred. I was reminding this gentlemen that he needed to check his backpack and he tells me how everything to do with going to school is such a pain in the ass. He tried to talk his girlfriend into going in to the store and buying gum for him. She wouldn't so he dropped his backpack on my feet and went in the store. I said "Oh, I'll watch this for you." When he came out, I gave it back and he told me that when he builds the big boat he will consider letting me on board during the flood because I was so kind and watched his backpack. Okay then. I felt very honored.

Today I actually got to do my job mostly. I much prefer receiving. At least with it you can measure how much you get done. When you are up front you don't really have a good grasp on how much theft gets prevented. Anyway a good week and I am glad it is almost over.

Full Work Day

I must be spoiled. I usually work four hour days and I like that. This week is rush week being the first week of fall quarter. That means my bookstore is busy and I got relegated to backpack checking today. I worked 8.5 hours today and I am tired.

Neighbor Sharing

Lynn, my neighbor from up the hill, brought me a nice piece of steelhead this afternoon. Then when she found out our cucumbers weren't producing enough she brought me back some lemon cucumbers and normal cucumbers. We kind of share back and forth like that. I gave them a load of firewood that Dave was given a month ago. Frugality at its best.

VanWagoner's Est. 9/13/2008

My friends Nathan and Stacey got married last night. It was a beautiful day for a wedding and it was a beautiful wedding. It was held at Stacey's parents' house in Beaverton. A gorgeous house with a lovely yard. Collin, who is Stacey's son was such a little man in his tux. And he wore it the whole time. Even when he ran away from the girls onto the tennis courts next door. He is quite a dancer also. Addison, Nathan's daughter was everywhere and looked beautiful in her white dress. No pictures of Nathan, but I got one of Stacey. I was so impressed with the children's tables. There were gift baskets for each child. We were fed a catered dinner which was really very nice and the caterer was hilarious. She would not let us eat from the children's buffet. I did want to tell Stacey's mom to sit down, have a glass of wine and breathe...it was all good. Congratulations VanWagoners.

Wow

Heather has reported that gas jumped a dollar a gallon overnight where they live in Georgia. Wow.

Had to Happen

Heather got one, so it was only a matter of time before Doug had to get another one. I think he has dirty feet in the picture.....must have been wearing sandals.

Dave's Check

Today Dave went to the doctor's office to get his thumb checked and rebandaged. It looked good. The doctor did say it is going to hurt for quite awhile. He did manage to figure out the right dosing of pain meds to make it tolerable. Naturally then the doctor gave him a new prescription so now he needs to figure out the dosing again.

It never stays quiet

I spent the afternoon in the emergency room instead of mowing. I was taking a little nap before I finished mowing the neighbor's yard. The next thing I know Dave is waking me up saying I have to take him to the dr. because he chopped off his thumb. I asked if he had the other piece and he said no it was in many many pieces. He was making wood shavings with a planer to use for smoke in the bbqer. Well he misjudged and got too close and his thumb got pulled into the planer and it got planed. We rushed to the urgency care and got right in. They took one look and gave him an antibiotic and covered the wound and sent us on our way to the hospital. The hospital knew we were coming and took him right back. They went right to work. His thumb is gone just past the first joint. So they cleaned it all out and then sewed it up. It is going to be tender for a good long while even after it heals.

Knees and Doctors

So I finally did it. Enough people have asked me when I was going to go to the doctor for my knee. For the past couple of months I have been limping around. It started off feeling like a pulled hamstring or tendon/ligament right at the connection with the knee. That lasted for a couple of weeks. Then it would just be stiff every time I sat for a bit. Slowly it seemed to get worse not better. I kind of knew it couldn't be something torn in there because it didn't really hurt until last week. So I bucked up and went to the doctor. Well nothing is torn. It all works the way it is suppose to. I got three x-rays and she said they don't show arthritis. But I have swelling which means fluid in the back of my knee, hence the stiffness and pain. So now I am on mega doses of ibuprofen for two weeks and I have a referral to a sports medicine doctor. If the pills don't work I am looking at the possibility of a cortisone shot........NOT.

Spooky

I was in slumberland and dreaming. Not a good dream. I was at a neighbor's house (not a real one) and a building behind their house was on fire. I was trying to get a kid to call 911 and he wouldn't. So I got the phone and I couldn't. Just kept getting a radio or something. Then my mother called me so I had her call 911. Went to see what I could do to help when I noticed the fire had spread to a tree between the house and the outbuilding. Then it was on the house. About that time the smoke alarms went off.......in my dream and in my real life house. In my dream there was a reason. In my house there was not. Just one of those flukey things.
Then as a sidenote.....a few hours later one of the real neighbor's house alarm went off. Something must have been in the air.

Road Trip

Dave and I took a little road trip this weekend. We went to the beach and spent the night. From our hotel we had a nice little view of a river and then we could just see the ocean through the hotels. The sun came through the clouds and was kind of cool. We walked down onto the main drag and had dinner at Girtle's Restaurant. I had a nice halibut fish and chip dinner and Dave had a seafood combo. It was very nice. Then we walked down to the beach. After that we went back and found a Safeway to get me some NyQuil. Unfortunately a cold descended upon me during the drive. On the way back to the hotel we spotted this cool deserted building. I thought it was cool and I'm sure they will tear it down and put something else there. We made out way back to the hotel and sleep. Well sort of. The NyQuil didn't help me much.
The next morning we went and had pancakes at the Pig n Pancake. None of the shops were open so no shopping. So we just decided to return home. It was a nice trip even so.