Grackles be gone / an interview with The State Journal

Ya gotta love Grackles

No you don't, what am I thinking!  I know the Grackle population is shrinking fantastically and is now down to 73 million from a high of 190 million which I'm sure farmers appreciate.  

Grackles are one of the few birds that love humans and their messiness.  I caught this image under my feeder yesterday as this dude was checking out an old sesame bun I tossed out.  He looks pretty happy with his catch.

----------------------------------------------

I had a meeting with the Police Chief yesterday . . . on purpose . . . . and all went well.  One of the things I was really hoping for was to be in a high speed chase with hopefully me behind the wheel.  I've played enough Need for Speed so I figured I knew my way around chasing someone.  

Well, we were talking about stuff and I heard a siren and I got all prickly and excited, here we go I was assuming!  sigh.  . . . but alas it was the fire department.  DAMN IT!  bad timing.  Perhaps next time.  I was thinking about asking the Chief if next time there was a high speed chase if they could pick me up. 

This morning I had a meeting with the City Engineer which is always nice. I totally love that stuff.   

Yea yea yea there are all sorts of misleading emails being forward to anyone who will listen which really have no relevant value except for the love of poking the bear for absolutely no reason at all,  but that is fine,  free speech and so forth. Not going to worry about it.

I tell ya - I honestly did not know how much fun being in city government would be. Soaking up knowledge every day and my brain is loving it. It's like I'm on a knowledge rush. 

One thing that has been proven which seems to be a typical government thing, the lowest bidder is not ALWAYS the best choice. Case in point are the contractors who put the new metal roof on the police station and promised that there would be no problem with receiving radio waves.   

Well, perhaps not for typical office buildings but it's a little more important for police stations.  There were some lessons learned and that is what we can take away from that experience.  Cheapest is not always best. 

OH - there was something really cool in the station that looked like an electric chair but it was for holding really violent people.  

I don't have any real entertaining takeaway from our talk, it was a good talk and I was allowed to leave whenever I wanted too. 

Seems to be how things go in my life with police anyway.  I was kicked off an elevator at the Department of Justice by an officer for absolutely no reason except he did not like the way I looked.  Oddly a year later I was allowed to sit in the Attorney Generals office and look through his binoculars at bullet holes in Miss Forward (yup, bullet holes). 

 I was kicked out of a squad car once, actually pushed out by an officer for some unknown reason when a call came in.  

Then there was the incident in County Stadium where a bachelor party got crazy and the guy sitting next to me felt that since Tommy Thompson was only 600 yards away on the field it was the best time to moon him.  Seems some people thought that was inappropriate and I was collateral damage.  I was asked to leave the little jail place under County Stadium.  BTW - I have a photo of me and Tommy Thompson and he has his arm around my shoulder . . . .and he is wearing lycra.  I cannot unsee that image.

But I digress.  I'm just adding fuel for the email misinformation "police".  This IS a "leftist blog" you know, can't be trusted, just like the State Journal can't be trusted I was told. 

OH OH - I was interviewed by that leftist newspaper and I gave Sentry and Columbus a shout out advertisement. I was asked on camera if I considered the recession over.  I asked "technically" or a "personal observation".  (Technically it ended YEARS ago).   

Long story short, I said in Columbus there are houses being built after a few years of no building and a developer was about to build a new Sentry and Hardware store so I thought that if the developers were building again money must be starting to flow again.  We shall see how much reaches the paper.  

 ---------------------------

That's all I got - I have to emotionally prepare myself for Milo goign to the vet this afternoon.  ;-(