Perpetual Ruminations

Small Town Lock-Down

So far so good. I had my first day back to work yesterday and did a six hour shift. One of the guards I trained in earlier this year met me at the parking lot and stuck around just to make sure I didn't have any problems. No one had said anything, and I didn't expect anything, just something he decided to do on his own, to help me out.

After my shift ended, the guard who is leaving worked his last shift, but didn't have a name tag. I had to go track down a store manager to find out what happened. Instead of taking his badge after he finished, they had already taken it a day early. Nothing like pushing the poor guy out the door in the first place, then take his badge a day before he's even done. I couldn't say to him at work, the manager that is, but what an asshole. Of course I already knew this, he just continues to confirm it.

I didn't have any problems, but it was nice to have some help, just in case. Also, being out for about three months, it was good to have someone there in case I forgot anything. I surprised him and did my job great. Well, except I forgot one symbol in the password and couldn't log into the tablet. He did enjoy getting to tell me the password. He even got a laugh out of it. towards the end of the shift, it got pretty busy and it was nice he was there to assist a little. After, I ended up sticking around an hour longer to assist the guard who took over after me, since it was still busy. I will meet with him tomorrow to get his equipment and to bid him farewell.

Today I had off, so took some time to work on the Jimmy this afternoon. What a beast that thing is to work on; you can't do anything as a result of it being so packed in. It has been running real rough, missing, and flooding. I had already changed out the cap and rotor, hoping that would fix it, but it didn't do much at all. They are fairly easy to get at, just have to lie across the engine to reach. Since it wasn't running much better, I stopped after work and picked up spark-plugs for it, and changed them out today. I can get at the three on the passenger side with some difficulty from under the hood, but the driver's side you have to remove the front tire to change them. Only one on the driver side looked bad, and I was beginning to wonder.

Then, it was over to the left side, but because of the recent surgery, I was having a lot of difficulty trying to reach the plugs. I ended up pulling that tire, too. It was a lot easy to get at them from the wheel well, and I will do it that way in the future. All three looked bad on the left side of the engine, one wasn't even firing and was wet with gas. After we finished, Rhonda had helped out, we put things away and took it for a couple mile ride. It run great! I don't know why it burns the plugs out every six months, and I wasn't sure that was even the problem, but I do know it now. When it starts running rough again, I'll know to just change out the plugs and may even be able to use the old ones once they are cleaned up and re-gaped.

Besides work and vehicle repairs, we had a bit of excitement in our little town. It's very small and sits on a crossroad a block from where I live. The other side is about three blocks, so the whole town is four blacks wide and at it's widest, four blacks long. Even though it's almost rural, we had every exit out of town blocked off and four sheriff's vehicles driving around. There were another two that assisted with roadblocks as well as a firetruck that could pull forward and seal the highway that runs by our house. No idea what was going on, but it sure looked like they were driving around town looking for someone. We didn't venture out, except for a few minutes to walk out to the front and look around. Not knowing what was going down it may have not been safe, and no matter what the situation, I'm sure we would have only hampered the police activity by getting in their way. I still have not heard anything on the news but hope to soo,.