Answer: 1 helicopter, 17 squad cars, 2 fire department meat wagons and a couple of unmarked cars.

That's what I saw the other day. The news reports on TV and the newspapers didn't say much about it, so I don't really know what happened. They said this guy walked into a motel 6, then left while waving a gun around. The police showed up and told him to drop it, but he didn't. Note that no one claimed he tried to shoot anyone. An officer then shot him, luckily either using discretion to not kill him, or perhaps just being a poor shot under stress.

The lack of in-depth news coverage and scarcity of details leads me to wonder if there was more to this incident, but I can't say I wouldn't feel pretty
endangered in those circumstances and shoot too.

I was just amazed at the number of officers that showed up to participate....It must have been a slow day in Phoenix. Of all those official people there, no one moved the bad guy, laying on a stretcher in the hot sun, on the parking lot, for at least 15 minutes.

Like the saying goes, "Life is tough and then you die!"

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You've probably seen the Phoenix area on your local news lately. Great walls of dust rapidly moving across the city, Floods, high winds blowing trees over,
Horses being swallowed up by gigantic cracks in the ground, lightening stikes causing big fires, etc. In short, all the makings of a really vicious monsoon season.

Every day I think, "Today's the day". Strangely, all this weather seems to be flowing around the city, especially where we live. It's like we are in the eye of the monsoon.

Yesterday I sat in the back yard and watched lightening so far away I couldn't hear the thunder. While it rained a couple inches everywhere else in the whole state, the only way I could tell there were sprinkles, was cause the pool had raindrop ripples in it.

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Monday, My Dad's oldest friend, Jack, One of the few left that grew up with him in the Omaha Home for Boys, died. They were there for years together from the 1933 to 1943. Dad wasn't all that lonely as his brothers Harold and Ernie were there also. Jack was 80, and a real nice guy. When Dad started getting confused with Altzheimers, Jack would help him keep "on track" when they went on trips or out for the day. Once, on the way back to California, stopped at a rest stop, Mom and Joan went off to the rest room, as did Jack and Dad. The men got back first and climbed in Mom's white car. When Mom and Joan got back, they were asking where the men were. They got into the front seat and waited, only to discover a few minutes later when the couple that owned the white car parked next to them came back, that Jack and Dad were patiently sitting in the back of the wrong car! Jack was supposed to lead Dad, not the other way around!

Click to read about the early years at the home. Midway down the page, click the 75 th anniversary book, and read section II. Quotes from Gene Thompson, Ernie, and Harold are there.
I'm sure all of them are in most of those pictures. I think there are only 2 or 3 boys from the home in those years left. All the Thompsons are gone now.

So that makes 5 deaths in 8 months.... I think it's time for a respite.....As I mentioned before, I don't handle these things so well and I can't afford to act squirrly any more this year. (I believe I gave examples of my poor behavior in times of breavement before, so we won't go there now)

Curiouoso* trying to figure out who might be next so he can visit before it's too late.