April 9th, 2011

This pay period has already come and gone. Gas prices only help when it comes to more quickly draining the bank account, especially where my truck is concerned. I swear, on pay day I went to fill up my tanks *yes I said tanks, plural...i have 2 tanks, one that is 19 gallons and one 14*..... well so anyway, I went to fill up my tanks, and all in all it cost me $104.00. Of course, then I did something different as far as my bi-weekly lotto tickets go, I usually get $10.00 worth, doing $5 on powerball and $5.00 on megamillions. Well this time, I did $20.00 and did 100% megamillions. The jackpot for this drawing isn't quite as high, it's only around $45million compared to Powerball being over $200million, but hey, I figured it feels like a better idea to put all my tickets into one single than to divide them up. No matter what people say about ("the odds of winning are practically nothing!" or "you're never going to win!" or "you have better odds of being struck by lightning!"...) Well, to those people I say "POO ON YOU!" ;)

What I say is "it's more a matter of "when" not "if." And some day I will make a believer out of those that simply don't play because they think they will never win. Well with that attitude, they are right! We all have the power to control our own lives, and some day I will have complete financial control of ours, never having to worry again. Something funny tonight when I came into work, me and the other guard went up to behavioral to check on the trouble patient, and apparently he was calm while in restraints but that's not the funny part. We were chatting with the staff and I glanced up on this marker board and there was a set of 6 numbers written on the board with $210,000,000 written underneath. Immediately I knew what it was... "lottery numbers I take it?" i said, and they mentioned that the staff up there will randomly put $5.00 a person towards the lotto and one of the daytime staff members goes and gets the tickets. I would love to go in on lotto drawings with my co-workers, but total there is only about 5 guards, and i doubt they would all be interested. It'd be funny though if we did, all 5 of us putting $5.00 or $10.00 towards the drawings and then one day we win. I wonder if we would all give a few weeks notice and resign or if only myself would, or if 2 of us would resign. I know my plan when it happens, if I'm still working security here is to give a notice immediately and resign after a few weeks. If it was a very large amount, I would buy our house from my parents, make an offer on the really run down hotel that we stayed at, with the intention of fixing it up, updating it and turning it into a really good hotel.

It's all dreams right now, but some day i have faith that although they be dreams currently, in the future they will be reality. We just have to have faith, for God is good, and we just have to keep pushing forward and we will eventually get to where we want to be. So today, our babysitter was out of town all morning, and so I stayed up with Zoe till mid afternoon before going to bed myself. I worked long and hard to get my algebra assignments done, which were hell because one was a quiz, and one was a check to see how you are understanding what you are working on, but technically arent both those things the same? lol.. What sucked is we are working on algebraic graphs. I can graph pretty easily, and sometimes I can find a slope, but other times they give me a random fraction and say "find the slope," and I took one look and thought "i have no freaking idea!" lol....

So in those cases, I simply did the best I could, got the answer wrong, and moved on. OH WELL! better a lower grade than failing, or even a 0, so hey, whatever. Then after taking care of all 4 algebra assignments, I called the automated line for our electric company. I thought we were like $1400 behind, but when it gave me our balance, it said our balance is $1,050. That's a pleasant suprise. I was planning to pay the $300 plus a little extra so we could start paying down the balance, so I payed $360.00 to them. That will put our new balance at like $690.00 or something, and so if we pay a little extra to it for a few more months, we should get back on track. We still gotta get back on track with the city, we owe them probably about $500.00 because of them loving to double bill for water and sewage and trash when we also have to buy trash stickers.. sucks royally!

So after paying electric, I searched online for where I could find the best deals for speed quad-roller skates. The ones that are too small cost me $140.00, but I think those will actually fit Erin (worst case scenario she will have to wear thick socks). Then I looked up cheaper versions and found them for around $100.00, then I looked on ebay and cheapest there was like $60 to $75 plus shipping, but I randomly thought "let me check out amazon," and I found brand new speedskates that are made in chicago, and they were for like, $39.00, so all in all it cost me $45.00 with shipping, for skates that look like they will be what I am looking for. They should definitely be a ton better than the skates at the roller rink. And because they are through amazon directly, they will arrive quick. In fact, I bought them around 1:30 this afternoon and by the time I got up after sleeping 5 hours and getting up around 8:45, I had an email from amazon saying they shipped. It's like "SWEEEEEEEEEET!" so, now all that is left is to forward the link for skates for ally's birthday present to grandma. =)

So, although I'm sure there is more that I can go on about, I will begin to close. First though, this week security has remained hightened because of that violent guy upstairs that hurt maintenance bad and did a little bit to the security guard. We have extra guards working with us just in case, and we are not supposed to leave the campus at all for anything because they want us to be able to respond quick. Just yesterday, we were 15 minutes from getting off, and the nurse calls me and is like "this is ______ from behavioral med, we are going to go ahead and put him in restraints, he has been making some statements and some threats, and we are just really nervous about what he is going to do. I have already called the cops, and I am not announcing it overhead as a code yellow because I don't want him to know what's going on before everyone is here." I said "10/4, we are on our way and will bring whoever we can with us." So I got on the radio and was like "Maintenance do you copy?" "Maintenance here." "Maintenance this is Chris with Security, we have an unannounced code yellow in behavioral med, and we need all available personel to respond. We are going to be putting the patient back into restraints. Cops are on the way." "10/4, on our way, maintenance out."

When we got up there, we had quite the crowd. 2 of us security, 4 maintenance, 3 nurses, and 4 cops. We all took off anything that can be used against us as a weapon, and went in. The guy took one look at all of us, and got the look on his face like "oh shit, this is all for me?" and he walked in the room on his own, laid down and let them strap him up. I guess because we had such big numbers, he knew he better cooperate otherwise he was not going to be having a good time in a minute. So I left thanking God that everything went smoothly. I don't like getting into physical confrontations with patients, but it has happened. My technique is usually to not get too close until I have enough backup and we can all get them disabled without anyone getting hurt. I told our babysitter how for some reason this guy was calm with me when I was talking to him, and she said "well chris for a guy, your voice is very calming. Some guys have very intimidating voices, but you dont." I was like "i'm glad you think so."

So on that note, time to sign off. Till next time, you all take care.

C