Tuesday, April 2, 2024

Fun With Maps


Another part of my training for the new job involves memorizing the map of the surrounding area. I need to know every town, every street, every intersection, various landmarks and who has jurisdiction over each section. It's a large area and is quite the daunting task. My boss trained with me on the map one day last week when my trainer was off for the day. She was totally cracking me up.

She points to a big area on the map and told me the story about how this one farmer owned all the land there at one time. Then he got mad at his kids and decided to sell it off, piece by piece, so that they had nothing to inherit. Now a whole community of Amish has sprung up there that causes their own set of problems. (Like, God forbid, building without permits and burning stuff without permission!) I was laughing at her indignation at the situation.

She pointed at an exact location and said, “This is where the Extremist lives.”

“What makes him an Extremist?” I asked innocently.

“He is constantly sending us Freedom of Information requests and causes no end of problems and paperwork! He is a complete nuisance.”

(Ha ha hahaha) I was really trying to hold in my laughter at this point.

She went on to tell me that this place has a lot of sovereign citizens and somewhere here (she waves her hand over the blue area) they have a fenced in compound with a 50 caliber machine gun guarding the entrance.

“Can you show me where they are located specifically?” I asked, “I want to go there when the zombie apocalypse hits.”

“Why?” She was shocked I would say such a thing. “They will all be dead!”

I shrugged. “I'm sure they have canned goods.”

She smiled.

I really like her. Anyway, it was fun and time flew.

Tomorrow is my first 12 hour shift and I have to be at work at 5am so not sure I will be able to post the next day or two. I'm busy today since I'm going to try to get my haircut by a professional for the first time in 5 years. Also want to try to make some banana bread so no extra time.

Hope you are all doing well. Take care out there.

10 comments:

Cederq said...

Good for the Extremist! May he bug them into paroxysm! Getting cans? I think you may try to join them when the time is right...

wendyworn said...

lol!

clayusmcret said...

What Cederq said.

Tree Mike said...

Having a 50 Bmg is a mindset I've been associated with in the past. It's a good thing. not a bad thing. Got to shoot a California Army Guard 50 and a private 50. got to shoot a buncha full autos between the mid '80s to the early 2000s. Life is good.

Justin_O_Guy said...

I'd be curious as to the subjects of the FOIA requests. And slowly ,quietly,getting to know some of those people might be a decent plan.
Mom was a dispatcher for the Tecumseh, Oklahoma PD. She told me that she could tell when it was a full moon without a calendar or looking up,just the calls coming in. The numbers went up and the reasons for the calls were nuttier. Another thing she said was the best dispatchers had been waitresses. They have experience with pressure to keep things moving, coordinating between Those in need and the providers,, my words, from what she said thirty years ago.
Tecumseh graduated 98 kids in 72,and had two stopligts,one mostly flashed yellow on the busy road and red on the other. At lunch time and five o'clock it was a Full On traffic control unit! And someone rolled the wheel with the pipe and stop sign out to make a road a four way stop. If a town that small saw such a dramatic change in calls on a full moon, well, draw your own conclusions..
Who knows? Maybe it's booshit.. A good percentage of the kids I went to school with were getting a monthly check because they had enough Indian blood in their veins. IDK how that might play into it.
Five Years? I sure hope she gets it Just like you want it. Maybe you could just hold your Guy Fawkes mask and get your husband to take a coupla pics.

If you see a difference in things on full moons, I'd be interested in hearing about that. I never knew mom to be a bullshitter, but I've always wondered about that story.
I'm sure they have canned goods☺
Brilliant..
I'm expecting you to go Do it and be better at it than most people who are just starting out. If it gets chaotic, you know that the time it takes to take a breath and push the If I screw up, Consequences fear away is time well spent.

wendyworn said...

great comment Justin! I saw the crazy during full moons when I worked at the casino, so your mom was right.

Cederq said...

Justin, I was a nurse in a Portland area hospital, we were the secondary, minor trauma hospital and you can believe the Full Moon Theory, it is fact! We always had an appreciable uptake in trauma cases and weird injuries and the crazies came out of the woodwork as we were one of two large psychiatric hospitals, Holladay Park and Portland Seven Day Adventist Hospitals. I worked at Holladay Park, which is no longer a hospital.

Justin_O_Guy said...

Well, calling that one Confirmed.. I'm sitting here trying to get my head around that. I don't Think I'm crazier on a full moon, but, there's a chance we're dealing with 100% pegged on crazy 24/7..so, meh..Ohh,waitaMinnit,,you're not suggesting our crazy quotient just naturally goes up a notch or two and we don't feel it are ya?
I should probably get my arrest records and see if they were on full moons..

JL said...

Ah yes...the civil service bureaucrat. Most of those folks are probably the leading experts at labeling people who have little tolerance for government incompetence and/or who just want to be left alone as 'extremists' without actually having met any of them.

For as much crap as people like to give to cops (some of it well deserved, granted), municipal/state(provincial), and federal government bureaucrats cause far more problems and they do it mainly because they often don't have to deal directly with the people they're screwing over.

Good to hear you're taking those folks with the requisite grain of salt and carrying on having fun with the job, Wendy. You have more patience than I do.

Justin_O_Guy said...

About that map.. I'm mostly in the Air made of hot soup zone, but close enough to the Tornado part that we get some occasional excitement. The threat is worrisome,the aftermath of trees down and the dump truck load of dirt in the roots used to be a shocking sight. Seen it enough it's not such a big deal. , and the hurricanes have lashed out far enough north to knock enough trees down to kill the power for days. And it's the best place I've ever lived..
I could drive west for less than an hour and get well into the Full eclipse zone, but in keeping with the Avoid crowds thing and the hype, I'm just going to watch from my back yard.
As usual, if anything weird happens during the eclipse, the government did it.
Well, it's Possible that This time, if something happens, God did it,,
I'd hope we could all discern the source.
The bottom of a Really Large sandal coming down on DC would be Fine.