Giant Target on His Back

Great! Now Dad has a giant target on his back. Here's the story.

Since moving further west Doug has been experimenting different ways of getting to work and back. He has tried driving our car, riding his bike, and taking the bus. The car seems to be the most convenient - but that ties up a car all day and with Scott home we sometimes need two here at home. He wants to ride the bike for the exercise - but it has been stinking hot since we moved out here in May. The bus is pretty good - he can do some reading on the bus AND his work gives him a pass to use the bus so the cost/savings ratio is great!

Anyway, last week he took the bus. On the trip home there was an "incident". He catches the bus on 19th Avenue and takes it south to Glendale Avenue. Then he transfers to the bus heading west on Glendale Avenue and gets off at 83rd Avenue. The problem with the Glendale Avenue bus is that it passes by a charter high school. Lots of times the charter high schools are loaded with kids who have been removed from their home schools because of "problem behavior". We try not to judge but this incident sort of validates the comment.

So the bus stops and the students getting out of school load onto the bus. Doug is sitting there, minding his own business, when he can see a kid with an exacto knife scraping and scratching on something. I'm sure he's creating a cheerful, positive, and encouraging message for his fellow bus riders to enjoy reading. NOT!! So Doug jumps into action. He says, "Hey." Waits - no response. He says again, "Hey." Then one more time, "Hey!" The kid finally looks up and Doug says, "I'm going to turn you in if you don't stop messing up the bus." There was probably a tension filled stare down - which Doug won. The kid stopped and that was the end of that.

But I have noticed that since that day Doug can find many reasons NOT to ride the bus. He thinks he might have a

giant target on his back.

That being the case - he's glad the weather is getting milder and the bike is a good option. He's pedaling into work today.

BLUE/Scorpions

Thanks for all the input on the BLUE and PINK issue. It turns out that BLUE was the top vote getter but by only 1 vote. And we learned that part of the BLUE scenario was suggested by the PINK side. So had that been known - maybe PINK would have gotten a little boost. Either way it was fun and I think BLUE and PINK are good sports for participating. Hopefully they enjoyed it.

On to the scorpion topic. Yesterday we found 2 - yes 2 - scorpions in the house. One wasn't moving (read DEAD) and the other was moving (read alive and well). Doug took care of both of them. The dead one was pretty easy. The alive one took off pretty fast when he realized the shoe was coming down on him. Lucky for me I got a picture first. In the picture you can see a rectangular white tile. Use that for size reference. The white tile is 2 3/4" long. The scorpion then - by my calculations was at about 2" long. It certainly was a juicy mess when the shoe met the scorpion.

The flurry of scorpion activity necessitated a scorpion hunting party. We didn't find any more in the house. But outside we found about 10 or so. I was holding the black light - Scott held the putty knife and was the executioner. We had about 5 sure kills and 3 misses. So we'll probably head out again tonight to finish the job.