Insane Random Ramblings

Yesterday my coworker and I were waiting for our food in a pizza shop. The tv was turned to CNN. They did a “power ranking” of the most dangerous cities in the country. I knew Camden would be at the top and they didn’t disappoint. They were #2 for violent crimes for a city of its’ size. The number #1 most dangerous city is St. Louis which kinda surprises me. I didn’t think St. Louis was that bad.

The top five “winners” are:

1. St Louis, Missouri
2. Camden, New Jersey 
3. Detroit, Michigan
4. Flint, Michigan
5. Oakland, California

Hold your head up high Camden. You’re no longer The Most Dangerous City. Can you feel the sarcasm coming off of my keyboard?!?!?!

I was walking towards my bus stop after work and I noticed a large group of teenagers on the opposite side of the street. That’s not really unusual since most of them are hanging out downtown for a few hours after school. I was surprised by the sheer number of kids though.

Just as I got close to them, I heard alot of shouting and noticed that there was a lot of movement into the street. I turned my head and saw 2 seperate fights and both fights were girls. In the one fight, I saw the smaller girl trying to rip off the larger girl’s shirt.

I stayed on my side of the street and kept walking. I didn’t want to get caught up in the madness. I hadn’t even taken 10 steps when the first police car showed up. By the time I had gotten almost a block away, there were already 3 cars with several police officers.

While I’m curious as to what eventually happened, I wasn’t about to stand around and watch it. It always seem to be the innocent bystanders that get caught up in the madness and I wasn’t gonna let that happen to me. 

We meaning the bus that I was riding on. Luckily nobody was hurt and there were only minor scratches to the car but it was still crazy. We were near the preschool furniture store bus stop when a suv pulled out of a convenience store parking lot and the bus side-swiped him. Actually the bus barely grazed the truck. The mirror on the bus did scratch the paint of the suv. We had to sit there for almost 10 minutes while they exchanged information.

The worse part of the situation is that the bus driver will get a mark on his service record even though it was totally the other guys’ fault.

I remember when Mr McNasty hands first showed up. Then he went away for a few days and then he showed up again. I thought he was weird then and I always stay vigilent when he’s around.

Well I was talking to someone that I catch the bus with and she noticed that he was strange as well. She said he wears a Taco Bell uniform but sometimes catches the bus downtown. There is no Taco Bell anywhere near downtown. Then she said that he was just acting weird in general on the bus like she expected him to start mumbling about ls2208 codes or something. She then told me to watch myself when he’s around since he gets on at my stop.

I assured her that I would. I always stay alert when I see him coming. If he’s already at the stop or I see him at the stop before mine, I don’t wear my headphones and make sure to pay attention. He’s weird and I’m not gonna let him catch me slipping.

The other day I said that my company is giving all employees a free ticket to a baseball game. Well some people had to start complaining already. The want to go with their spouse/significant other/children etc. While I understand that, it’s supposed to be a employee bonding experience type of deal. They can always buy a ticket for the people they want to go with and try to switch seats if that’s the case. Of course, they want the other people to be able to go free as well.

I’m pretty happy myself and it just proves that you can’t please some people.

Remember last week when I talked about this guy? Well he’s back at my bus stop again. He’s been there for the past few days. He’s kinda creeping me out right now. He just stands there staring. He’s always sweaty and clammy-looking like he just got off of a treadmill or something. Then he kinda looks at me then looks away then sneaks a peak back over my way.

I usually put my headphones on once I get to the bus stop but I feel like I need to be extra observant around this dude. He seems pretty weird and he gives me a bad vibe.

Yeah it’s snowing again. But that’s not the crazy part. Nope almost 3 feet of snow and still going and there is something else even crazier going on. It’s snowing almost everywhere in the U.S., even in Texas. One of our off sites almost had to close down because they had a foot of snow in Dallas of all places. I guess if you had an appointment with a dentist in Texas then you had to cancel because you couldn’t get there. In this area we’re used to snow but Dallas shuts down with 2 or 3 inches so I could just imagine how much havoc a whole foot of snow caused.

This weather is really crazy.

We wear business casual clothes at work. There are times that we are allowed to wear jeans though. It’s usually every Friday. Well we’re allowed to wear jeans from Christmas Eve through New Years Day. However when we were in our weekly staff meeting, we were told that we could wear jeans the week of Christmas, which is this week. Unfortunately, our manager told us the wrong week so we showed up to work with jeans while everyone else was dressed up.

Thankfully they didn’t ask us to change. You had better believe that my manager sent out a blast email letting us know the correct dates. Oops my bad!

Yesterday was totally weird. All of the things happened before I even started work. One thing happened just outside of my job. I was walking across the courtyard towards my building when a man standing by the ATM dropped his wallet. Everything in his pocket fell out including everything in the wallet. His credit cards, money and id hit the ground.

Someone went to bend over to help him when he shouted “No!” really loud, spread his arms spread eagle and got into a football stance. You really have to imagine it to get the full visual. Then you’ll see how funny it was.

I do understand him not wanting anyone to touch his stuff, especially since it was sensitive information. But that was a crazy scene at 8 o’clock in the morning.

It’s been chaotic here for the past 3 days. Streets have been totally shut down while the dignitaries were in town. Apparently it’s par for the course wherever the summits go. People in cities like New York and Chicago are used to it because they have these kinds of events all of the time. We never have stuff like this happen.

We like when big events come to town because it generally means a windfall for the city as far as revenues. This time almost every business in the downtown area is closed so there won’t be a big boost to the economy. It does show that the city can handle this type of event again in the future.

Maybe next time we’ll see some kind of economic benefit from a large event such as this. For now I’m glad this is over. I don’t like seeing the police, the National Guard, and armed military personnel on every corner.