Where's the gun? Let's use a screwdriver!

Uggg. The running theme seems to be young in all my posts huh? Early 20's this time.

Authorities identify woman, 22, who was stabbed to death

A 22-year-old woman stabbed to death last week in the northeast valley was identified Wednesday as Brittney Nicole Junsay.
The Las Vegas resident died from multiple stab wounds to her chest, the coroner's office said.
Las Vegas police arrested Elizabeth Denise Crocketts, 21, in connection with Junsay's death. Crocketts stabbed Junsay on Friday with a screwdriver during a fight in the 5000 block of Nellis Oasis Lane, near Nellis Boulevard and Gowan Road, police said.
Crocketts was being held without bail at the Clark County jail. Her preliminary hearing is scheduled for Oct. 12.

The first commenter must be one of us. 

Where's the gun? - Southern Nevada Style

Inspired by Weerd Beard and his "Gun Death" pieces I decided to do some here but mine are going to just be stories from southern Nevada. Help people see how even a small area can be full of violent non-gun violence against each other. I could go back and do some of the major cases since we have been here but I like keeping my lunch. Of course this first one is not exactly good at keeping the food down.

Investigators say godmother beat baby with metal pipe:

Investigators are revealing new information on how 14-month-old Dyon Johnson was allegedly abused and murdered by her godmother, Mariann Harris.

Southern California authorities booked 23-year-old Harris on a fugitive warrant late Wednesday night after Harris fled Las Vegas for a relative's home in Victorville, Calif.

After the baby's August 12 death, there was speculation about how the infant suffered the blunt force trauma that caused her death.

Investigators now say they believe it had nothing to do with a fall, but rather a metal bar that Harris used to strike the little girl.

According to court documents, the paramedics that arrived to Harris' apartment home noticed the child was cold, had glossy eyes, and had probably been dead for some time. Once at the hospital, doctors noticed Dyon was covered in bruises around her face, head and collar bone.

Disgusting nasty woman. I am so glad she was caught despite running. Of course this isn't a death to rally against though right because it isn't violent enough? Please people. The filth of humanity is going to find a way with or without a gun. I know many laugh at the saying but face the facts- Guns do NOT kill people, PEOPLE kill people and will continue to do so no matter what laws you put in place.A  criminal is labeled that for the pure and simple fact they have no regard for law!

Well that is a way to try to use the law in a bad way.

Found this lovely Nevada news article. A dad doesn't like his daughter's boyfriend and asks him to leave the property. Boyfriend refuses. Dad shoots him dead.  Fabulous. The anti-gun people are going to get so up in arms over this case. Having been pretty unclear over our location before except for saying the desert I will say we are in southern Nevada AND news like this makes me mad. It gets the entire area riled up over gun rights. As it is we finally made some headway over some stupid permit rules requiring you to qualify with every semi-auto you plan to carry concealed. If you wanted to carry it you had to bring it in and pass a shoot test. However revolvers were considered one thing so you only had to qualify with 1 revolver. That was recently changed so now we only need one qualifier for semi-auto and 1 qualifier for revolver. Soooooo back to topic. Here OC is not a good idea especially in the cities. Police have a shoot first ask questions later mentality. If it is a gun on a person it must mean that person is a criminal bent on wickedness so we better shoot them. I swear we have an officer involved shooting once a week just in Las Vegas. The surrounding areas aren't a ton better. Going to be interesting to see how this plays out.

**Another article, this one from the major paper of the area. I found the comments to be interesting. This one is very much going to create ripples for the area. I also want to say that if my post seems in anyway heartless it is not meant to be so. Maybe my feelings aren't displayed well but just from the facts given it seems that the dad used the fact that he told the boyfriend to leave and he didn't as an excuse to use deadly force. He used the fact that he could technically call him a trespasser as a reason to shoot.  Not knowing anything but the slim details given it looks like stone cold murder that he hoped to hide behind trespassing. That is what makes me mad. We are not a Castle Doctrine state though prosecution is rare when the resident has cause to use deadly force. This still doesn't seem to fall into that type of scenario. 

** More details. This case is looking horrible.

The joys and fails of my holiday week!

I had a roller coaster week. Christmas eve we let the girls each open a present and then we got them to bed. Santa came that night and we woke to gifts galore. Bug was in heaven but poor Squeak was overwhelmed. I think she opened two things before she just sat and stared at all the packages, lol. Hubby bought me my shelf-reliance system which rocked the world, lol. We spent most of the weekend letting the girls play and watching tv or playing games, it was great.

Then Monday happened. I went to the store for groceries and to spend the rest of my Christmas money. When we got home I pulled Squeak from her car seat and took her and a couple bags of groceries into the house from my Durango parked in the garage. When I came back out for more stuff there was an entire gallon of milk on the ground spreading it's liquid goodness. Knowing the stench that would follow if I didn't clean it up I hopped into my SUV to move it and pulled forward. Guess who forgot to close the rear hatch and pulled her garage door apart while ripping the rear wiper off? ME!!! Yeah, it was great. I called a garage repair dude and proceeded to wash/sweep the milk out of the garage. I called the hubs to warn him so he could get the mad out before he saw me and decided to bury me in our back yard. The garage guy came and said we were screwed and needed a completely new door. There went $1200. Hubs just thinks it is funny as hell and ribs me all the time.

The next day I got to see one of my brothers for the first time in months. He and I are very close so I was excited to see him. He lovingly filled me in on his life and mutual friends and all the family gossip I hadn't heard. We hung out, played games, and took the girls to the park. It was nice.

NYE was approaching and knowing how my father loves to see Bug and at the Brother's prodding I arraigned for Bug to spend NYE with my brother, father, and step-mother. I think that was pretty big of me seeing as how my father has nothing but critisism on how we are raising the girls. He hates the LDS chirch and feels we are doing a bad thing by raising the girls LDS. He also has huge issues with me staying home with the girls and seems to assume I do nothing but sit on my butt and expect the Hubs to make money and then come home and take care of the house and girls too. I swear it has to be a miracle neither girls is dead since I do nothing for them or our little family. I also invited everyone to our house to celebrate Squeak turning 1. His first comment after the invitation was, "Who's going to be there?" See if my adoptive mother (his former wife) and my siblings from her or my LDS in-laws were going to be here then he would avoid it at all costs because he doesn't want to catch the evily contagious Mormon bug. I said "No one but us." meaning my little foursome, my brother, and my father and step-mother. He agreed to a breakfast for Squeak. So he came. I planned it as a breakfast so we could all hang out, play games, do whatever. It was the first time he had my brother and I (his only children) in the same place in about a year. HA. Shame on me for hoping. He ran out of here faster than I could blink. I don't think he was even here two hours. He throws a fit about how I don't make an effort, about how the girls are raised, about my laziness, about how he wants a relationship with me but I put up a wall. So I do make an extra effort and he throws it in my face. I guess the effort is only acceptable if it is his way and his terms. Uggg..... WHATEVER.

Then the good! My Mom came in that evening with her amazing guy. We played games and ate dinner and talked. It was exactly what I had hoped for with the earlier get together. The next morning Squeak opened her presents from Grandma and had a ton of fun. My Mom left for home and we watched movies, played, and I read some of my new book stash.

So overall there were some awesome highs, some crappy lows, and a bunch of moments in-between. Overall the week was amazing. In a 10 day period Hubs was home for 7. We laughed and enjoyed our rare time as a family. I cried a bit but I am a crier so it was all good.

My thoughts on the Ft. Hood Massacre and aftermath

I watched much of the Ft. Hood Massacre aftermath on TV along with the rest of the nation. Speculation varied from all over the place, from multiple spots to multiple shooters. I was horrified to be honest. I've mentioned before that my ex-hole is in the military. And through the years of our marriage, I met and befriend many soldiers, their wives, girlfriends, kids and families. My heart went out to the soldiers and families. I can't imagine having something like that happen on our post.

Yesterday, I found myself at our post's Readiness Center (long story I won't bore you) and could help but look around and think that it could have happened to anyone in that room. The thought floored me. I've taken several days to try and organize my thoughts on it, and I still don't have a good grasp on my feelings and I still haven't. I'm anger, terrified, and saddened all at once.

But today, something happened that shaped at least one thought. On Facebook, you can make/take quiz's that usually involve some sort of current events. Today, I saw one that asked the question "Should Muslims be allowed to serve in the US Armed Forces?" At almost 80%, the answer was 'no'.

I was floored. The only number I could find on Muslims in the US service branches was that the Pentagon states the numbers are around 3,500 Muslims out of 1.4 million U.S. service members.

Of my personal experience, I met people of all religions and backgrounds. Conservative Christians from the Midwest, Catholics from Boston, atheists from Alabama. And one Muslim. His name was Kareem, and he was born and raised in NJ.

I didn't know Kareem well. He was more of a friend of a friend. But once my boys left for Iraq, his name popped up more and more in the stories I heard. My friend Scottie and he grew very close, and slowly I learned more about him. He joined the military because he wanted people not only to change the world, but to show his patriotism. When he was finished with his service, he wanted to go to medical school. And in the pictures I saw of him he was often goofing off and making funny faces.

On August 6th, 2007, Kareem and 3 others (Nick Gummersall, Jake "Tommy" Thompson and Juan Alcantara) were killed when an IED went off in a home they were entering to search for insurgents. These men were my friends, my "family by choice" as Tommy used to say. And their deaths were devastating to me. Never once did it cross these boys minds that Kareem was Muslim. He was an American, a soldier, and their brother.

But Kareem became known to the world when Colin Powell mentioned a photograph taken of his mother at his grave site, used by the New York Post in a photo essay about the War on Terror. I agree the image is powerful, but for me it's for another reason.

I was at the service where a 21-gun salute was made in his honor. Saw his mother break down in front of the helmet and dog-tag memorial meant to represent his honorable service. Saw the tears fall down his fathers face as the notes of "Amazing Grace" wafted through the Chapel Air.

For me, those who question the rights of Muslim-Americans to protect their country. I feel they directly question every action Kareem made for his country, including his death and the honor he gave our country by serving it.

WTF Part 3

I'm really starting to wonder who the hell is in charge of our Dept. Of Transportation, if they're even elected, and how the hell I can get them fired. Beyond that even, who looks at county road projects and says 'Ya' or 'Nay', because they are also on my list of people with whom I'm quickly losing patience.

I understand that our weather here isn't the most accommodating when it comes to road construction. We have 3 months of hot followed by 9 months of cold, sideways rain. Everything has to be squeezed into a horribly small time period. That doesn't excuse blatant stupidity. For example, in a very large flood early this year, a portion of road was washed out right outside town, but not on a 'main' route. It was hastily patched, and included a HUGE speed bump asphalt dump type thing. It stayed there for 7+ months. A friend mentioned the other day they had taken it out so I decided to drive out and take a look. They did take it out. They also left in its wake an unmarked section of (now) gravel about 10 feet long at the peak of a hill in a 50 mph zone with gullies on both sides. Smart, real smart.

Friday I drove out to the Logger's to check out the chickens and the garden and came to a section of road that had been completely torn out. It isn't even gravel anymore. It's just ungraded dirt. I drove, and drove and drove. By the end of it I realized they had torn out probably 6 miles or so of road. I'd swear it was longer, closer to 10. The road wasn't in amazing shape, but it worked. It's a back country road that's basically only used by the people who live on it or have a reason to be down there.

I asked around and found out that the county decided to remove a set of 'dangerous s-curves' somewhere in the middle of this mess. To do so, they had to buy out a portion of a family's hay field (that was full of hay). Apparently removing an asinine amount of road from each side was also required. Moreover, they did this prior to one of the hottest weekends of the year, when the road is actually traveled a lot because of its easy river access. Now it has huge potholes and they are going to have to re-grate it all before they do a thing to fix it.

The 'hazard corners' in question

There are a few things in this world that get my goat, but this sort of thing is one of them.

FML

I just got a letter from TriWest (aka the military insurance company) informing me I have a week to choose my new PCM (aka Primary doctor). Um, excuse me? I was granted my final divorce decree from ex-hole late last year. He told me he had notified the Army, which we obviously hasn't seeing as they still have me as his dependent. I called the office number I was given, and they explained to me I couldn't do jack-crap about it. Even if I fax/mail them our divorcee decree, they still have to recieve all the same information from Ex-Hole and big fat chance of that happening seeing as he gets a chunk of cash each month for having the extra person on his stuff.

Wouldn't you think that the Army would want to know this sort of thing? Maybe save themselves a couple bucks along the way?

So angry right now.

Uh, seriously?

There was a huge traffic accident in the area Tuesday. Traffic was backed up 10+ miles for hours. A friend was trying to go to class by taking the main freeway, and it took him 4.5 hours to complete about a 20 mile loop (which only got him about 6 miles on the freeway, and 15 or so back on back roads). I initially heard "drunk driver hit a car carrying two pregnant women" and I was so angry. Turns out, the SUV (an Expedition) was actually carrying 9 people. 1 man, 2 pregnant women and a whole herd of kids. 2 of the kids and one of the women were ejected from the car, because none of them had on seatbelts or were in car seats.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

How irresponsible can you be?! I can't imagine not having the Boy in a car seat, and especially NOT in a seatbelt at the least. If you don't have enough room, take two cars. I don't see how this is complicated. I feel terrible for those kids, but those parents should be ashamed of themselves. I hope to goodness Child Protective Services is all over this. Thank God that none of those children were killed.

Here's an idea....

Don't use PROPANE inside your HOUSE.