5 random things from the past 7 days...

My Wednesday 5 for this week is just random; some serious, some not so serious...

1. I'm baffled by a phone call I recently made.

   Here's the scenario: I'm driving down a heavily driven main road in the city and standing appx 10-20 feet before a stoplight is the same homeless who usually stands on the corner w/ his sign. He's standing in the middle of the road, on the dotted line, in between passing cars (45mph). He seems to be a bit unaware of his potential suicide mission standing there... so I call 911. This is NOT a joke, this is exactly the conversation: automated answer "we're sorry, all emergency operators are assisting other calls, please hold and your call will be answered in the order it was received, please do NOT hang up." this played 4 x's over about each 30 seconds. In a REAL emergency, 30 seconds means ALOT!! Finally, the operator answers, and asks if I need police/fire/medic. I said 'not sure, police I suppose', the operator then proceeded to take my info, which included me describing the man as a 'homeless Caucasian male holding a sign'. Right after that the operator asks me 'can you tell me what he looked like'? Didn't I just do that????? This phone call took a total of 6min 37sec on my cellphone. Honestly, it left me concerned. Not to mention that our city just budgeted a pesticide spray by air for canker worms, $2.6 million - shouldn't we focus on emergency response??? The article here about the air sprayed pesticide clearly states 'minimal effect on people, plants and other animals'. All this to save some trees?? I think we should first focus on how we're going to help the people who are 'minimaly effected'... it would definately make sense to add some funds to hire some extra people to man the 911 calls.

2. Are the baggers at grocery stores now trained to use as MANY bags as possible? Before my eco-friendly bags were put to good use, I found myself feeling a little put off when they asked me 'is plastic ok' and I'd say 'yes, please load them full' at which time I get a look like ' oh no, she asked us to load them heavy, can we do that??' Seriously? I worked at Food Lion for 3 years during highschool and just after, and I was taught to bag them full... what's with the individual bag for grapes, the individual bag for banana's? Can grapes and banana's not easily co-exist in the same plastic bag... and just to shake it up a bit, maybe they could place the grape and banana's on TOP of ... say some BOXES or CANS????? This plastic bag wasting bugs me! I now use reusable bags mostly, but when it happens that I have to use plastic, I still get a little nutty and ask them to load them as full as they can...I'm the crazy lady who doens't care if her bread is bagged on top of her eggs.... HA!

3. Gas prices frustrate me. Why can't we just copycat Brazil's ethanol production? Oh, yeah, that would impact the economy (esp for oil producers), but isn't what is going on right now impacting lives and the economy??? I see that there are some serious talks about increasing our production of Ethanol; you can read that here and here. Big crap shoot there. Hmmmmm, what to do?

4. Is it me, or do you often see police officers on cell phones??? Isn't it ironic that this lands in the top 6 causes of automobile accidents? I use a hands free set, but 4 out of the 6 police cars I saw today on patrol had officers chatting away on a handheld cellphone! These 5 states have laws against handheld... I admit, I am a car/cellphone talker - but I try my best to use my head set most of the time!

5. Tonight, we agreed that we will write letters of support to soldiers in Iraq, and send a box with them. We also will write a letter of thanks to our local Fire Department. A recent tragedy in a city that I spent much of my childhood and young adult life in has more then opened our eyes to the reality that these guys risk their lives, and I doubt they hear 'thank you' enough. Salisbury lost two of it's finest, may peace be with their families and friends. Quoting one of the citizens interviewed during live coverage this week "it's a heroic loss, it's a terrible loss", that sums it up, it's so sad for the city. One of these guys was 40 and served with NYFD as a medic before coming to Salisbury, the other was a 19 year old.