I Do What I Want

I designated Wednesday as an airport day, since I hadn't gone out there to hang for a while. I mentioned it to Steve on Tuesday night, "Hey, after I get my stuff done tomorrow, I'll come hang at the airport." Surprisingly, he seemed to be looking forward to it. As he left for work the next day, (by the way if you didn't already know, Steve works at the airport....) he asked what time I'd be heading out there. Cute!!
I got there at noon, and began organizing the office a little. It's the most fantastic office, with a big upstairs window that looks at the mountains, the lake, and the new mall that's being built across the highway. I rearranged the couches and stuff so the windows were a little more accessible. I hooked up Steve's new computer that he bought back in Sept or Oct....it's been sitting on the floor in the box. I threw away about 10 pounds of paperwork stacked on his desk that probably should have been thrown away 6 months ago. He keeps everything.
Then I took a ride on the Hoss Fly.



It's a 350 small block Chevy under a barstool with a steering wheel. Steve's boss got it at a custom motorcycle shop while he was picking out his newest v-8 trike.
He'll never ride the thing, so I think technically it was a gift for Steve and I to screw around with. Scary as hell to ride, till you're used to it.
I took it over to the airport's main terminal, to show it off to the manager and staff. They got a kick out of it, and took my picture while I was over there.

Shortly after the picture was taken, a thunderstorm moved in and the rain came down
in sheets! Haven't seen weather like that in a while.

I love airport days. I think I'll have another one next week.

Sheriff Joe

Went to the Republican's Lincoln Day Dinner on Sat night, and Sheriff Joe Arpaio was our keynote speaker. He was HILARIOUS. In a time where you have to refer to people from Mexico as "Hispanics" or "Mexican Americans," or whatever, Joe did not hold back by repeatedly saying the word, "Mexican." He is fed up with the illegals overrunning our state and our criminal justice system, and he's doing a lot about it.

Besides establishing the Tent City, Joe is also enforcing Federal Immigration Laws that the Feds won't enforce. His deputies arrest anyone who cannot prove citizenship, and if the Feds won't pick them up from the jail and deport them, then Sheriff Deputies load them up into buses and take them back to Mexico.
If an illegal is being held at the jail and his family comes to visit him, they must prove their citizenship. If they are illegal, they are taken into custody.
Joe says out of the 40,000 prisoners processed recently, over 10,000 of them were illegals. What does the public think? Well, when Joe established an illegal alien hotline number, for people to call if they suspect someone they know is in the country illegally--they got over 3,500 calls in the first few months.
Here are some more things we learned during Sheriff Joe's speech:
1. Inmates are fed twice a day: a bologna sandwich for "brunch" and a hot meal at dinner. It costs 55 cents per day to feed a prisoner.
2. Inmates sing the National Anthem every morning and God Bless America at bedtime.
If an inmate refuses to sing then their diet is switched to bread and water for 2 weeks.
3. All deputies and jail officers are to address inmates in English only. All signs at the jails and tent city are in English. An inmate is expected to learn English in order to communicate.
4. No pornographic magazines, no premium cable.
5. Chain gangs exist for men and women prisoners, and now there is a juvenile chain gang, for teens who have been charged as an adult in their case. They wear striped prison jumpsuits.
6. Temperatures in the Tents of Tent City reach over 130 degrees in the summer. Joe has reasoned with Amnesty International and the ACLU that if our soldiers in Iraq have to tolerate such heat in the same kind of tents, then these prisoners should be able to withstand it.
7. When the old jail facilities in downtown Phoenix became too old and outdated to use, Joe opened them up to the county animal control dept. They are now used to house the homeless dogs and cats, and they are air conditioned. Prisoners are trained to work with the animals and care for them while they await adoption.