R.I.P. John Joseph Houghtaling

For those of us who have memories of cross country road trips with our families in the 1960's and 1970's, this man was a giant.

John Joseph Houghtaling, inventor of the "Magic Fingers" vibrating bed, died Wednesday at the age of 92.

Tick-proof and ready for adventure

Ticks are disgusting.

Nothing ruins an outdoor adventure family fun day like the discovery of these disgusting little parasites on one or more family member.

Here in the midwest we mostly worry about catching Lyme Disease from these guys; out west it's Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever. But did you know ticks also transmit tularemia, tick-borne relapsing fever and, for those of you south of the Mason Dixon, something called Southern Tick-Associated Rash Illness?

The Centers for Disease Control offers a helpful page on ticks and tick-related diseases. It includes this handy chart on relative sizes and stages of development of common American ticks:



You might want to consult this chart, or the CDC pages I've provided, next time you decide to take a restorative stroll through the fields and meadows near your home. I'm just saying.

The eldest and I are setting out today on a quick run up to Wilton, Wisconsin, to meet some people from our church. We're going to camp overnight, cook a big pot of campfire chili, and then spend tomorrow canoeing down the Kickapoo river. Even though I have the cautionary words and advice of Grant Miller echoing in my head, I'm still looking forward to being out of touch with the rest of the world for a day or so.

Before any outdoor adventure I always treat our clothes with my favorite outdoor product, permethrin. Since finding out about this stuff, I have not found a single live tick on anyone in our family. It keeps off mosquitoes as well. And we no longer have to slather ourselves in DEET, which makes kissing MizBubs while in the middle of nowhere a lot tastier.

Starting Monday I get to cross another career goal off my list. I will be in school all week, being trained as a firearms instructor. This is the third or fourth time I've requested the training, and for some reason this time I didn't get blocked because of politics. This is shaping up as a perfect week: camping, canoeing, and non-stop shooting with a break on Wednesday for a trip to a tiki bar.

Good times.

It's time to go

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The car is ready, the bags are packed and we're almost on our way.

We should be in Memphis by one o'clock this afternoon, and strolling the grounds of Graceland shortly after that. Then tomorrow it's on to New Orleans.

After seeing what a number the "guest bloggers" are doing over at Grant Miller Media, I decided to refrain from doing the same here. I've left these guys in charge of the compound while we're gone:


Anyone messes around here while we're gone, these guys will kick their ass. Hopefully they stay out of the liquor cabinet.

And now I'm off.

My Christmas Spirit Refuses to Die!

Not even sleep deprivation, sex offenders, violent crime, overtime, work-related holiday parties, drug overdose, autopsy and bureaucracy, can wreck my sense of holiday cheer. Nope. My Christmas spirit is indomitable.

This last week was something.

Our family, for all its chaotic zaniness, has always placed a premium on buying and decorating a tree together every year. Over the past couple of years, though, our tree-buying expeditions have gotten smaller, and I’ve missed the decorating once or twice as well. This year Hannah (our youngest) and I managed to get a tree while MizBubs and the Mad Seamstress were both at work. It was important to get the tree last Sunday afternoon, because I had to go out of town for a couple days to attend a seminar, and we didn’t want to wait much longer. So, we got the tree, bundled it into the back of the minivan, and got it home. We didn’t get time to put it up before I left on Monday. MizBubs did an admirable job of cutting it, getting it inside, and set up in our dining room while I was gone. It’s still there, undecorated. It’s been there all week like that, fresh and green and piney-smelling, but oddly naked.

I spent a couple days in Champaign, Illinois, attending a class on investigating officer-involved shootings. My department sent me to this class by myself, and I didn’t really know anyone else in the class. This meant that, for the first time in 18 years, I went to bed early while I was out of town at a seminar. I ate a good meal at a place called Radio Maria, and found a neat little vintage shop called Carrie’s, where I got some good gifts that I can’t talk about here without spoiling someone’s surprise. Best of all, I found a pristine copy of Hillbilly Holiday for $5! The CD contains four extra tracks of hillbilly Christmas goodness featuring Faron Young, Johnny Horton, the Davis Sisters and Buck Owens. It's out of print, and the cheapest I've seen it on Amazon is $50!

The class was informative and good, but two days of studying worst-case scenarios, gunshot wounds, lawsuits, police fatalities and the like left me a little drained and happy to get home. Then it was back to work, trying to catch up on some administrative crap and some cases I was working on to clear my desk for my 13-day holiday. Most of it was just routine—lots of forgeries and financial crimes, and the usual thefts and domestic batteries. I had one woman who believed someone else used her name during a 1985 arrest (she found out during a background check she had to undergo for a license she was applying for) and wanted her name cleared. The mug photo from 1985 was gone, the arresting officer long since retired. I got the original inked fingerprints from 1985, and submitted them as “unknown”; the results matched to the woman I was dealing with. According to the fingerprints, she was, in fact, the person arrested by our department back in 1985. I don’t see how someone could forget being arrested 20 years ago, but I guess it happens.

Then this weekend hit. An 18 year old girl died in her bed early Saturday morning. It looks like it was probably an overdose; I went to the autopsy Sunday morning and the medical examiner explained the telltale signs. We won't know for sure for at least 6 or 8 weeks, when the toxicology report comes back. What got me, and this is the first time something like this ever happened to me, was that the girl looked quite a bit like my oldest daughter. I tracked down her boyfriend, who I know as a burglar and junkie, ready to tear into him. Instead, I found myself faced with a 20 year old, on methadone for 6 months now after a 4-year addiction to heroin, who couldn’t stop crying because of his dead girlfriend. I did get an idea of where she might have scored before she died, but we might never know for sure.

That same weekend one of our officers caught a weenie-waver at the library. The freak was kneeling between the stacks, tugging away, and the officer grabbed him and handcuffed him so quickly the freak didn’t have time to get the, uh, offending part back in his pants. I talked to this guy for almost 2 hours, and found out that he loves visiting local libraries and masturbates in public or exposes himself almost every day. He also prefers looking at porn on the computers at the Chicago Public Libraries, because, he said “it’s easier.” Oh well. He had a stack of computer-printed photos, folded up and, eh..stuck together...with him when he got arrested. He printed them (thanks Chicago Public Library!) from a website that specializes in fully-clothed young women sitting on, and trampling, and rubbing their feet in the faces of passive, dopey-looking men.

I finally got to the end of the workday yesterday, and attended my final work-related party of the season. I bugged out early and got home to watch the second half of the Bears game. The best thing about yesterday turned out to be falling asleep during the post-game, snoozing happily in my knowledge of a Bears win with a belly full of holiday bourbon.

I’m cooking dinner for my family for the first time in over a week tonight: Cajun fish, sweet potatoes and greens. After dinner we’ll finally decorate our naked little Christmas tree, and all will be right with the world.

Oh, and I hope to have some more fun stuff posted later this week, before our trip to Indiana.