I'm angry if you haven't noticed

This was in the paper today:

http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/2006/Aug/31/ln/FP608310356.html

I'm thinking of writing a letter to the newspaper (maybe just copy and paste my blogs on this subject, heh) because this article is awful and misleading.

My letter:

"I am writing this letter in response to the article you published on Thursday, August 31, 2006, describing the arrest of a Windward Oahu man suspected of arson. My parents are the owners of the gas station mentioned in the article and in my opinion, they have been treated unfairly by HPD and HFD.

On July 22, 2006, the man you mentioned in your article started a fire at my parents' gas station. This is the fire you referred to in your article as having occured "last week." The suspect started the fire by holding a lit cigarette while pumping his gas. The pump caught fire on both sides and the suspect fled. A witness followed the suspect, took down his license plate number (which was given to the police when they arrived), and called the fire department. HFD never came to the scene. From what I have been told, HPD showed up around 30 minutes after the incident. I have a hard time understanding this, since the police station is only two blocks away from the gas station.

I wasn't there to see the fire, but was told by my mother that the flames reached as high as the top of the pump. My parents put out the fire by themselves with a fire extinguisher. This first fire was worse than the more recent fire you mentioned in your article. It caused more damage and threatened more lives because it occured on a busy Saturday morning.

What upsets me is the fact that no one seemed to take the situation seriously. A few days ago, my mother made a phone call to the detective who was handling the case. She asked him about the progress, emphasizing the fact that she wanted the suspect to be arrested. She also expressed her concern that he might come back and start another fire. This detective dismissed her worries and told her that he did not believe this suspect would make a repeat offense. Well, he did.

I would like to see this detective and HFD admit that they were wrong in how they handled this case. HPD had all the information they needed to make an arrest, but it was never done. My parents are hard-working taxpayers and they deserve to receive the services that their tax money supports."

Whew, finally got it all out.

The second time

The first time:
Let's Call It Love: I might get dirty looks for this

Not long after I woke up from my homework-induced coma this evening, my mom received a phone call from the gas station. All I heard was "Fire?? You're kidding! You're not kidding!! Celeste!!! Go with your father!!!!"

I jumped out of my shorts and threw on a pair of jeans. I think that was the shortest amount of time I've ever taken to put on pants.

My dad and I ran to the car. He drove at 50 mph up our hill. For those who don't know our hill, it isn't easy to drive up at 50 mph. He must have been flooring the van's accelerator. We got to the intersection and the light was red. Dad didn't even hit the brakes. He flew through the red light, making a left turn and driving down the middle of the road. There were no such things as lanes tonight. For a few moments, I tried to accept the fact that I would die this night. Either I would blow up at the gas station, or dad would kill us in his car.

As soon as we got to the last intersection before the gas station, we saw all the cars being forced to turn around. The police had come quickly tonight and they had parked in the middle of the highway. Dad had to stop to wait for all the cars in front of him to turn around. I opened my door and ran towards the station as fast as my legs would carry me. I wasn't sure what to expect, but I as I got closer, I saw fire trucks, which made me feel a little better. At least this was an improvement from last time.

As I was sprinting, I looked over my shoulder to where dad was trying to drive past the police roadblock. An officer had drawn his gun and pointed it right at my dad as he tried to drive through. I heard yelling (something like, "I'm the owner! I need to make sure the gas is shut off!!"). Somehow, no one really noticed me racing towards the station on foot.

The cashier was standing in front of the door with the customers. One regular customer who was at the bar across the street ran over when he saw the flames and helped the attendant with the fire extinguisher. He was still holding on to it when I reached them. The cashier told me it was the same guy who set the pump on fire the last time. Our hero with the fire extinguisher (thank GOD for him!) pointed out to me that there were three matchbooks lying on the ground next to the charred pump. You don't need to be a detective to realize what this guy intended to do. He was hoping for fireworks tonight.

I wanted to yell at someone. Unfortunately, I started screaming at the firefighters: "WHY DIDN'T THE POLICE ARREST HIM AFTER THE FIRST TIME?? WE ALREADY MADE A REPORT!! WE KNOW HIS NAME! WE KNOW HIS LICENSE PLATE NUMBER! WE KNOW WHERE HE WORKS!! AASLKJ;ALKNASLEK!!!" I was so pissed off that I could hardly get the words out, plus I was nearly crying out of frustration. I'm sorry I ended up yelling at the firefighters. They were doing all they could.

I went inside to print out pictures of the suspect from our surveillance cameras. My mom arrived around 15 minutes later. She was understandably pissed off also. She said she had called the detective two days ago asking why the suspect still hadn't been arrested. She told the detective that she hoped this guy wouldn't come back and do it again. The detective dismissed her concern and stated that he was sure this guy wouldn't do it again. I've got something I'd like to say to this "detective" (honestly, you don't deserve the title), but for the sake of decency, I had better not say it here.

The suspect was arrested at his home while I was waiting with my mom for the evidence team to arrive.

Overall, I feel really let down by HPD. The officers who came to speak with us tonight were extremely nice and helpful (and they got the guy!), so I'm thankful to them, but this shouldn't have happened in the first place.

You can't go yet

My dad has diabetes. He has lived with it for about 20 years now, give or take a few years.

He did something wrong tonight (too much of the wrong insulin) and his blood sugar went too low. When this happens, he acts like he's drunk, but tonight he was completely insane. My mom and I helped him downstairs to check his blood and give him food. We were giving him the glucose tablets but it wasn't helping. The whole time he was just yelling and screaming. My mom yelled at him to be quiet - the neighbors might call the police.

Mom was yelling at him, "What did you shoot?? Which insulin did you shoot??"

She was almost crying as she pleaded with him to tell her. "I'm going to call the ambulance!!" she threatened. She and I both knew it wouldn't do any good. All they could do for him was what we were already doing.

I've never seen my mom on the verge of tears when my dad was low. I knew it must have been bad if she was so upset. I knew he must have been dying and it scared me. I almost started crying as I dragged my brother out of bed and pulled him down the stairs to help us.

Dad started passing out in his chair and mom slapped him really hard on the arm to wake him up. It happened several times. He had a hand print on his shoulder for the rest of the night. He always said people die when they lose consciousness like that. "Don't let me pass out," he always said.

We got the blood meter working and poked his finger to get a blood sample. The meter gave us a blood sugar reading of 40 (don't know the units of measurement). He's supposed to be around 100. Take into consideration that we had already given him 5 glucose tablets, and the truth gets scary. He must have been around 20 when my mom first realized he was low.

We gave him more strawberries and finally mom resorted to pure sugar. She knew this could possibly make him go too high, but all that mattered at this moment was that it would keep him alive. The real sugar came through for us.

Now we have our dad back, but I'm still freaked out. I love my dad.

While we're at it:

I love my mom.

I love my brother.

I love you all.

If I somehow die suddenly, just know that I love, even though I might not say it (I know, I should).

The Grr Story

There's a person (we'll call this individual "Grr," but I'm 99.99% sure this person will never read this anyway) who affects me in the worst ways.

Sometimes I really like Grr, but other times, Grr just frustrates me.

Sometimes Grr will talk to me in a very interested manner. Other times, Grr will completely ignore me.

I think I recognize a pattern. When Grr is "in a relationship," Grr tends to become very cold and generally unpleasant to be around (for me at least). When Grr is "single," Grr finds ways to talk to me and make me feel oh so important.

Grr is very nice to look at, but sometimes Grr gets a big head because of this. The big head irritates me and I end up not wanting to talk to Grr anyway.

Ugh. I need to program how I feel before I walk out the door, or else it all just gets too confusing.

Motivate me

Everybody has a girl. Everybody has a boy. Except me, but oh well, that's life. Actually, I've got my guitar, so I guess we're all even.

We've got four people in our carpool gang now. We get along really well and sometimes I laugh so hard that I can't drive.

My friend gave me S-K buttons for buying her two S-K shirts (Janet horse and yellow/brown dog). I've got Carrie's face button and a group S-K button stuck on my backpack now.

Yeah, I'm obviously not obsessed.

I can play nothing in particular on the guitar for hours. I've got to finish The Bedroom Recordings II, so I'm going to try to put out a song a week. No guarantees on whether or not they'll be listenable. I owe Andy a lot for Portland, and he's requesting it, so he'll get it.

My button friend isn't dorming this semester, so hopefully we can finally revive our fake band and turn it into a real band. The Pears are gonna make their comeback.

There is so much I want to do! There is so much we need to do. All I need is someone to tell me I'm doing a good job, even if they're lying, and I'll keep going.

I only figured out how to add links to my sidebar just now. Trial and error never lets me down.

Let's hear three cheers for insanity!

TV On The Radio

There's something about these guys (TV On The Radio) that gets in my head and refuses to leave. It seems like their vocals are the same for pretty much every song, but somehow I'm not getting tired of it.

Some of the songs have strange hooks and sometimes things that seem like they shouldn't fit actually work well together.

Perfect example:



Hah! A blog with no S-K reference? I don't think that's possible.

Here we go:



Much better. It's weird being able to finally post pictures of them that I've taken myself.

The end of the S-K summer

I'm carpooling to school in an effort to make amends for driving an SUV (a small one - Ford Escape).

We got the 2005 model, right before they introduced the hybrid version. If they had put the hybrid out a few months earlier...man, regrets.

School started today. I had one class. I spent two hours waiting for my carpool partner to finish class. I spent the time checking Julia's S-K blog, reading S-K related messages on MySpace, posting S-K related messages on MySpace, looking for s-k.net, and wondering when the darn thing is going to come back. Please come back.

Today I wore the shirt my mom bought for me at the Oregon Zoo. It's bright blue with a monkey face on the front and a monkey tail on the back. It says "Oregon Zoo" above the monkey face. One of my professors - an environmental engineer - always used to tell us about the tall ponderosa pine trees in the Oregon Cascades. I told my fellow engineers that I went to Oregon to look at the ponderosa pine trees because I want to get into the environmental aspect of civil engineering.

One girl (who knows me relatively well) knew I was lying. "No...you went because..."

Honestly, I did want to see the pine trees. I do want to go into environmental engineering. That much is true. A trip with S-K and Northwestern nature! What a great summer!!

The sleeves today were long enough to cover up my tan. It's not going to go away easily. I don't mind. It's the best souvenir I've ever gotten.

At least it was just a dream

I had a nightmare last night.

Here's what happened:

Carrie Brownstein married Matt Friedberger.

:O

That's pathetic

I was surprised by how many Portlanders rolled down their car windows to ask us who was playing at the Crystal Ballroom. They did it both days!!!

WTFWTFWTF

They've got no idea that the three most rockin'est people in the world live in their city.

I've made a song about it and put it here.

Basically, everyone I was able to talk to at the shows did NOT live in Portland. I'm sure that there are plenty of S-K appreciators living in PDX, and I'm sure that they were there, but I just never got around to interacting with them. But STILL, it seemed so strange.

light rail 1

light rail 1
Originally uploaded by iamnotapineapple.

flickr test

One Thing Before I Go

I'll post pictures and stories on myspace blog.

Here