Take the good with the bad

…take them both and then you have the facts of life.

I’ve signed up for our local online city news, and surrounding areas.  It’s called the Lake Forest Patch. A daily e-mail is sent to me.  Sometimes the blog posts are okay, getting you some data, but it’s not a network news station.  Often, the writing / reporting can be fairly awful to the point it’s humorous.  (or it tells you absolutely  nothin’)  However, it serves the purpose to blast out enough so I can research further, should I desire more facts.

Lake Forest, CA is a small city between more well-known cities Irvine and Mission Viejo.  It is the first city that begins South Orange County.  Within the last decade, more people are aware of its existence and want to move here.  Nothing much happens, our crime is fairly low.  We don’t have a police department.  We’re covered by Orange County Sheriffs.

Although we have sports like everywhere else, our city tends to get over-zealous when it finally rains, they close all the fields.   If you play soccer or baseball, the slightest rain, and FIELDS CLOSED because the city doesn’t want cleats destroying the grounds.  It’s quite ridiculous and over-the-top.  What it’s doing is creating generations of kids that can only play soccer in dry weather.  Once some sprinkles come, OH boy!

So, with this knowledge, we don’t expect to hear someone is the best-of-the-best and has made pro from our city.  They don’t know how to play in the rain for cryin’ out loud.  Therefore, it is a HUGE deal to see the Patch send this article.  All right … facebook worthy post.  Go Lake Forest…

Not more than a week later, it’s announced that a nearby city (in Orange County) had a huge jail break, these are some bad dudes…

A couple days later, an OC Sherriff lost his rifle (facebook worthy)… God I hope those bad dudes weren’t in this vicinity.  Although, I don’t think it’s their weapon of choice.  If they are desperate…

A day or two later, after we were just celebrating a young woman’s triumph last week, a woman my age, is a suspected culprit in aiding in the escape of those inmates.

What the HELL is going on in my city?  With more people knowing about Lake Forest, and moving here…we’ve been getting some crazy stories lately.  Two pastors were arrested for child molestation. (several accounts)  A past beauty queen was arrested for child pornography.  That’s just a couple of stories from last month.  There’s more!

I’m ready to move.  And I know, crazy is in all cities across the world, but Southern California is becoming overly-crowded and insane with so many people moving here.  The word is out on our city, and they are coming.

Let’s hope they have BIG MONEY and will buy our condo.

 

 

Cheers to Noogie Pie

My friend, Paul, calls himself the Captain, is celebrating his blog’s anniversary of 2 years.  (see his post) CHEERS to him!  Any real man chooses his own name, according to How I met your mother.

Of course, love him… but, he’s a greedy thing.  He’s already been Freshly Pressed twice or three times, can’t recall.  Now he’s wanting more commenters on his site.  To top it off, he’s requesting everyone to bring food, potluck style, in honor of him… and now requesting a GIFT!  Jeez, some people…  Okay, since he’s my blogging pal, I’ll comply.

Yo, Cap’in, my gift to you is, I’m sending the Skipper over to give you a noogie, little buddy.  I heard he’s the best, so expect delivery anytime this week.  It can happen at any hour of the day.  Oh, and he’ll bring dessert, as well, I’ve baked a pie in your honor.

Vampires are going to sacrifice Children

Don’t you hate it when…

People don’t listen to you?

What would you do if you open your front door to see a woman, with FANGS, and she announces to you that Vampires are going to kill children as a sacrifice?

Naturally, you’d want to alert the police… right?  Even better if you know where one of them resides.  Best to get right to the point.  Now… to get attention, you need everyone’s attention to alert them to the pending doom of these children.  So, it’s sheer cleverness to jump on the hood of a police man’s vehicle, at their residence, and dance and create such a ruckus, mischief, that the neighbors will hear and send other police.

click for article and see video

DONE!  Mission Accomplished.  Except what do you do when people don’t believe you?  Other’s must pick up in your absence.

Apparently, this man has been trying to alert everyone forever, because he’s been in trouble for disturbing the peace in the past.  (It doesn’t matter that he’s a sex offender) – here’s the thing…no drugs, no alcohol, and not diagnosed with mental illness… police were not entirely convinced.  So they took “crazy” dude  to the hospital where the hospital medically cleared him so they carted him off to jail for disturbing the peace by gyrating on hood of car.

He was medically CLEARED.  Nothing wrong with him.

So, please tell me… who’s addressing this vampire situation and going to save the children?  VAMPIRES people…Seriously, who’s got Buffy or Angel on speed dial?

You now are aware, and are responsible for spreading the news to others- to protect the kids.  How are you going to do it?  I think I’ll hook up a microphone to a car and drive the streets, shouting through the speakers.  But, when I get arrested, someone else has to pick up the “awareness” cause so the police don’t think I’m crazy.  Power in numbers!

 

Been a lot of Helicopter action lately

We live in a fairly safe city, one of the safest and smaller so it doesn’t necessarily make those “safe city” lists, but Irvine and Mission Veijo have and Lake Forest is sandwiched in between those two cities.

As far as Southern California goes, Lake Forest is a great place to live.  We like our neighbors and other families.  It’s just expensive, or rather, all of Southern California is beginning to become too costly to raise a family and gain any kind of savings without living check-to-check.  We just can’t get ahead and have nothing saved for a rainy day.  BUT our city is safe!  However…

Lately, this wonderfully, safe haven has had a lot of helicopter activity.  Like any city, you have your “better” sides of town and typically any helicopter/cop action is not near where I live and work, but on the other side of town.  However, recently this past month… I don’t know if Orange County Sheriffs are breaking out the helicopter for minor things or if there is a true need for “eyes-in-the-skies.”  Regardless, the first thing we all think is they are trying to catch a murderer, or bank robber.  Yet, it wouldn’t surprise me if they are just trying to locate a “person-of-interest” for any random thing.  When many of the Orange County police/sheriff’s drive BMW motorcycles and crime is not high, it just makes me wonder if a helicopter signifies a true threat existing to the public.

No matter what, as soon as you hear the chopper, you still get concerned (and on high alert) especially when it flies up and down your street flashing the spot light and flying around for an hour at night and eventually you hear the cops yell “STOP!” – later we found out it was a “hit and run” (no injuries) that someone smacked into another person’s car and then took off… huh… so the helicopter came out to assist the sheriff’s in capturing this individual that was hiding in our neighborhood.  (some scared, drunk, young person).   Okay, out of the 10 years I’ve been living here, that’s the first activity we had like that.

Then this morning, on my way into work (I work in the same city) – There’s a helicopter flying in a circle at the main corner/signal.  As I turn and enter my work’s parking lot, the helicopter put on his spot light (I guess to try and see better in the over-cast morning) and flew over and hovered over my work’s building.  WHAT is going on here lately?  Does south Orange County have a new toy helicopter they are playing with or has this area truly starting to have big-time crime?  I wonder if there’s a website we can see the reason each time OC sheriff’s dispatch the helicopter.  I’d be curious.

 By the way, interesting fact… although Irvine and Mission Viejo has made the safest city lists… does anyone remember the serial killer back in 1984/1985 that was terrorizing Southern California and Northern CA – Richard Ramirez “The Night Stalker” – he’d break into bedroom windows at night and kill people in their sleep.  The scariest part was he didn’t just stick to one county, he was all over LA and OC county and San Francisco.  A Mission Viejo 13-year-old boy, was up late at night and startled The Night Stalker away, got his license plate number that lead to the police identifying him as Richard Ramirez and ultimately his arrest.  CRAZY, huh?  Read this article

Dear Suicidal Pilot and the airlines they work for:

Thank you for making me afraid of using an airline as transportation.  My 11-year-old has been bugging me to take him somewhere, anywhere on a plane again as he hasn’t flown since he was 3.  He loved it and wants to travel soon.  We were thinking of flying to Chicago…and now, because of your actions… I’m not so sure of our safety.  So here’s a plea to those contemplating suicide that are in charge of others safety…

… if you are thinking of offing yourself any time soon… and probably already aware there are programs out there for you… should you disregard those programs and move forward with your plan…please be courteous and not take innocent people with you.  This goes for anyone in charge of other’s safety, like bus drivers and train operators, etc.  We already have enough to think about when it comes to terrorists, that we don’t have to worry what kind of day the pilot is having, as well.

I’m sorry you are distraught (and your loved ones should be ensuring you are seeking professional help) or suffer from mental issues that the airlines should have frequent, stringent evaluations in place to discover if someone is not quite right in the head.  The companies should ensure measures are in place that no one can purposely change the course of an airplane/locomotive without another pilot/driver/engineer agreeing.   I’m thinking the process should kinda be like that whole getting ready to let a nuclear bomb go… there are processes in place, secret codes, keys, etc… so that bombs are not just released by some person on a whim.  To alter a course of an airplane, should require secondary agreement or the control center or whatever.

According to this article, it looks like it took this incidence to make some changes, it’s so sad that it required a tragedy before issues were addressed, and this particular pilot had history with Leave of absence with this airline due to his mental state.  Ugh.  Here’s a quote from the article:

“In the aftermath of the crash, Japan Airlines says it set up a committee dedicated to reviewing “both the physical and mental health of flight crew for ensuring safe flight operations,” and has an established support system in place, including  psychiatric expertise. And faced with the recent horror of not being able to trust a sole pilot at the helm, a number of airlines responded to the Germanwings crash with new rules requiring at least two personnel in the cockpit at all times.”

I know in the USA, the pilots lock themselves behind closed doors so that terrorists can’t take over the plane.  However, what happens when one of the pilots goes psycho?

Go play on the Freeway

This was a joke within my family and our friends.  Whenever they were tired of the kids, the parents would say

“Go grab some marbles and play on the freeway.”

Appears someone took that literally.  Thank goodness, my 11-year old boy is at school, or I might have gone looking.  And not to mention we are quite a running distance from the freeway.

Read article

Normally, my first thought would be “where are the parents or care provider of this child?”  And then I read the article that stated it was 1:45 AM.  Well… yeah, they would probably be sleeping.  How do you explain that one?  And I guess you’ll have to have some door that locks with a key from the INSIDE if your special needs child knows how to unlock the door.

Actually, upon further review, there are a few things that concern me when reading this article:

1)  Is the boy truly autistic (the OC Sheriffs believe he might be) – and did he really leave on his own, or did his parents “drop him off” because they couldn’t deal with him anymore?  This section near the freeway is not near any homes, but the Mission Viejo Mall and Kaleidoscope shopping center.

2)  Is this boy acting autistic and purposely not giving the same name and age, because he was trying to escape some awful living situation and was running away to safety in the middle of the night?

3)  Typically, these articles are updated as the data comes in… but as of 3pm this afternoon, nothing has been updated.  Sooooo, the last thing OC Sheriffs were waiting for some parents to wake, discover their son missing, and then start calling the police… has the article not just been updated, or has no one made any calls about a missing boy?

Dang- it, now I’m all worried about this, I had to comment and ask the author of the article to provide update.  Something seems fishy about this.