OOOOPS!

After another long day at work, I'm heading home, later than usual. I needed to stop off at the grocery store and pick up some things - you know, essentials like a steak, a bag of pretzel sticks, some OJ and bread. Should be an easy enough thing to do. Although I'm not thrilled to have left work later than I should have, I'm consoled by the knowledge that I should be in and out of the store and home in time to make a quick bite to eat before the opening face off of the Capitals / Maple Leafs game. But things can't possibly go that smoothly for me, can they?

I pulled into the parking lot of the store behind another happy motorist. This brain surgeon is at least a couple car lengths in front of me. She spies someone getting ready to back out of a parking space, but she's already gone past it. So what does she do? Throws it in reverse and starts moving backward (quickly) toward me. I guess she didn't see those headlights behind her. And she obviously didn't hear me honking the air horn at her because (yep, you guessed it), BANG! She backs right into the front bumper of my police cruiser. Of course, I'm about as far from thrilled as I could be. I radio my dispatcher about the accident and then I contact the local police. I get out and talk to the other driver. At first she seems completely irritated by the fact that the police were called to come out an write an accident report. Then I have to state what should have been the obvious to her. "Uh, ma'am, you backed into a police car." That shut her up quickly. Sure, my car is unmarked, but only cab drivers, senior citizens and cops drive Ford Crown Victorias. And I'm clearly not the first two of those.

So the local constabulary comes out and gets all the information for the report and I get everything I need. Then I finally get to go in the store, buy my stuff and get my ass home.

I get home, let Jake outside, fix some dinner and crack open a beer (not exactly in that order). I was a couple minutes late turning the hockey game on, but I managed to salvage my evening.

Capitals 5, Maple Leafs 3. At least somebody won tonight.

Heavy Rotation 2/25/2006

Since I know everyone is just dying to know what I'm listening to on my iPod these days, here is my list of my recent favorites:

• "Right Here" - Staind - Always been a favorite band and their first track from their new CD is one of the best songs I've heard in a long time.
• "Jenny Was a Friend of Mine" - The Killers - This song just rocks (or is it 'rawks?').
• "Goodbye Again" - Vertical Horizon - OK, it's probably not the best song for me to be listening to post-break-up, but it's poignant and I really think it's a great song.
• "Kite" - U2 - I don't care how many times I hear this song, it will never get old.
• "Love Removal Machine (Peace Remix) - The Cult - I've had the CD with the original version of this song since I was in high school. Never knew an alternate version existed until I found it a couple weeks ago. I don't know why it's called "Peace Remix," but it's a very cool tune nonetheless.
• "Talk" - Coldplay - What can I say? It's catchy & I think Coldplay is an amazing band.
• "What About Everything?" - Carbon Leaf - I can't say enough about this one, you gotta check it out.
• "Will I Ever Make It Home" - Ingram Hill - This one's a really good sing-along for me.

It just sort of occurred to me that I listen to a lot of music during the course of a day. Not that there's anything wrong with that. But I get into so much, it would be difficult to list all the stuff I'm playing the hell out of lately. So this is definitely the short list.

As I sit here thinking about all the stuff I've been listening to, I can't help but think of Rob Gordon's (John Cusack's) line from "High Fidelity" - "Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to pop music?"

You Can Never Have Too Many

iPods.

I bought another one yesterday to replace my two year old, third generation model. And just like I said when I bought my first one - it's one of the best damn inventions known to man.

Ever since I bought my 20 GB model a couple years ago, I have used it almost on a daily basis. I bought the cassette adapter and a car mount/charger and I listen to it in my crusier at work constantly. (I still won't jump on the satellite radio bandwagon). Sadly, the one I bought 2 years ago was one of those in the batch plauged with battery issues. It's supposed to play for around 6 hours on a full charge. I'd be lucky to get 2 hours out of it. Plus, there would be times when I'd want to fast forward to the next song, only to have the iPod "reset" itself. I can't tell you how irritating it is to have to sit there and look at the Apple icon on the screen and have to wait a couple minutes for it to get it's shit together so I could continue listening to my music. I get a little impatient that way. I took it back to Best Buy twice and tried to get them to honor that product service/replacement plan that I bought along with the unit. They shipped it to God-knows-where last year and I was sans iPod for about a month. When I got it back, the paperwork they enclosed said it was tested and found to be in perfect working order. Bullshit. It still crapped out after a couple hours.

So anyway, I went back to Best Buy yesterday after work and finally broke down and got the new "Fifth Generation" iPod, 30 GB model. It's so damn cool, I can't even begin to describe it. Anyone that already owns one knows exactly what I'm talking about. I got the black one, which looks completely slick. The screen is larger, the unit is thinner and it's full color, baby! I'm totally digging how it displays the album cover art when the tracks play, too. I am, truly, a kid with his new toy.

Unfortunately I wasn't the lucky smuck that downloaded the one billionth song on iTunes. Apparently some teenager in Illinois or someplace out that way was. Lucky bastard won ten (yeah, 10!) of the 60 GB iPods, a $10,000 iTunes gift card (TEN FUCKING GRAND!!!!), and has the honor of having a scholorship established in his name at Julliard. All for downloading Coldplay's "Speed of Sound" for 99 cents. I'm not sure what I find sadder. The fact that a teenager gets all that neat shit or the fact that he didn't already own that Coldplay song. Either way, good for him, he managed to come away with some pretty nice stuff. Prick.

How The Hell Did I Do That?

I'm laying here in my bed agonizing over the pain that is shooting through my back right now. I'm pretty sure that I've managed to pull a muscle, but I can't for the life of me figure out how I did it. I hate that. And I think we all know what I'm talking about here.

Ever had an injury and you just can't seem to explain how you sustained it? I can't count the number if times I've looked down at my hand and noticed that one of my fingers was bleeding. "I got cut?" A leg or an arm that's pretty damn sore, but you don't recall hitting it against anything, doing heavy lifting, etc. As if the injury itself wasn't annoying enough, it's made 10 times worse by the fact that you don't know how it happened.

So that's what I'm going through right now as I lay here waiting for that muscle relaxer to kick in. (Thank God for having some left over from a prescription filled last year). Of course, the pain will probably subside soon and I'll still be here wide awake still trying to figure out what I did to myself in the first place.

Well, chances are, I'll never figure it out, so I won't waste a lot of time trying. I'm just hoping that this pill does it's job soon or I'll be forced to take another one and wash it down with a cold beer (damn those warnings about consuming alcohol with the medication - I need to get some sleep tonight!).

I Object, Your Honor

We have a saying where I work that gets used way too often. "Only in Prince George's."

I work in Prince George's County, Maryland, a suburb of the District of Columbia. Although the County government likes to use the phrase "Gorgeous Prince George's" when they're pimping their Chamber of Commerce brochures, make no mistake. Even a catchy slogan like that one (it is catchy, isn't it?) doesn't change the fact that it's one of the most violent counties in the country. We boasted a new record in the number of homicides last year. (I don't think they put that in the brochures, though).

Speaking of homicides, let me get back to my rant du jour.....

This past Monday I testified in a homicide trial for a man accused of beating another man to death with a baseball bat (while the victim was asleep in a La-Z-Boy recliner). Oh yeah, you can just imagine how nasty that scene was. I'll spare the details, but imagine smacking a grapefruit with a rolling pin. Same concept.

Anyway, I only had to testify on Monday and there were other witnesses scheduled to testify over the next day or so (all in all, it was a pretty open and shut case). The case was given to the jury to deliberate on Wednesday.

I was at the State's Attorney's Office on Thursday to meet with an attorney about a sex offense I'm working on when I happened to run into the prosecutor from the homicide trial.

"Did you hear what happened in our case?" she asks.

"Nope," I cleverly respond.

She then proceeds to tell me that the judge had to declare a mistrial. That kind of thing happens all the time, so I wasn't terribly surprised by that. What did surprise me was the reason. Apparently one of the jurors didn't understand English that well and was unable to properly participate in the deliberations.

Honestly, how the hell does this happen? I know there's a screening process in place for potential jurors and I know that they are asked a variety of questions before even being selected to be on the jury. And those questions come from both the prosecution AND the defense. So that means that this person's linguistic affliction went undetected by TWO trained trial attorneys. Scary thought.

So, on behalf of everyone, I'd like to say thank you to Consuela, Guadalupe or whatever the hell your name is for fucking with our judicial system.