Monday

It's Monday. I usually have Mondays off, but today my boss is in training (all week actually) and we need to get our Section's days off reviewed and approved for the next deployment period. So here I am working a couple of hours of overtime on my thirtieth wedding anniversary. I've got to suddenly do something else right now.

Now it's Tuesday. I handled yesterday - nothing noteworthy - and went home to my bride. On the way, I stopped and got a nice potted rose bush with beautiful red roses and a couple of nice cards. One was kind of funny and the other romantic.

I think the rose was a bad idea, because when I got home, we decided to just work in the garden (plant the rose, etc.) instead of going somewhere else. You know, just a quiet day of puttering around the house. Eight hours later I was dog tired and saying to myself, "I got to go to work so I can get some rest." We pruned the big pear tree. Big, big job. Then we had to figure out how to deal with the branches, etc. I don't know why I say "WE" because I really mean "I".

Actually it was satisfying and it felt good to get the work done.

This morning Laura and Rob Jackson from Louisville, Ky. were here and wanted to know if we could do breakfast. So I took my lunch break early and met everyone at Bake and Broil on Atlantic Ave. in Long Beach. Laura is probably Cathy's dearest friend. They are very sister-like and it's fun to see them get together. Rob and I have gotten to be pretty good friends too. So it was enjoyable. Actually I really hated to have to return to work, but that is still something I have to do.

The Jacksons used to live in Long Beach, but moved to the Louisville vicinity a couple of years ago fo a variety of non-fascinating reasons. We have visited them from time to time and become somewhat facinated with that part of the country ourselves. For one thing, by my calculations you can get roughly ten times the house there for the same money you'd spend here. In other words, a home purchased in the greater Louisville area for four hundred thousand dollars might easily be worth four million inan equivalent area in Southern California. While that might be just a little generous, it's close. So, we sell here, take our four hundred grand in equity and by a little nicer place in Kentucky.

There are many other reasons too. There's a Temple in Louisville, two stakes, an international airport, and it's centrally located to the eastern half of the USA - an area we would love to explore.

I mentioned Deployment Periods earlier. This is the operational month for the Los Angeles Police Department. Each Deployment Period (DP) is 28 days and they start on a Sunday. There are two pay periods in each DP. The DPs are numbered throughout the year and next Sunday will be the beginning of DP 10-07 (the 07 being the year). There are thirteen DPs in a year.

Not that I'm counting, but DP 8 of 2008, ends on August 16, 2008. That will be my last DP on the job, so I have twelve DPs left. y then, I will have worked 439 Deployment periods for LAPD. Seems like yesterday.