Murder

18 months ago a mom, dad and younger brother were killed. The sister and her boyfriend were arrested for their murders the next day. She was 12, he was 23. I provided evidence in the case, so I went and testified at her trial. She was 14 by the time she was tried for the murders. She looked closer to 17. She just sat there, looking disinterested. By the time I testified, the trial had been going on for three weeks already. She probably knew that she would be found guilty, and was bored of sitting in the prisoners box all day, five days a week. Nov 9 she was sentenced to four and a half years in the mental institute in Edmonton, and then another four years in a halfway house. She will be my age before she is released back into the world. She is going to have a very hard life. If she had done this when she was still 11, they could not have touched her. Her boyfriend will probably get three life sentences for the three lives he ended. Really, five lives were lost that fateful day in May 2006.

Shooting

I’ve never been a happy person, this is no secret. I’ve never been really suicidal, but I can’t say that I’ve never seriously thought about it. Recently, I had the opportunity to shoot a gun. I managed to harass and cajole my way into watching the officers in my unit do their recertification, and then they handed me the gun. Ok, so they gave me tips, and one of the officers administering the testing explained how to do everything while the other guys were doing their test. I know how to hold a handgun, and how to aim it properly, and how to pull the trigger so the bullet goes where I want it to go. Anyway, so, after an hour and a half of watching the boys shooting, and asking questions and getting well explained answers, I am told that I can go into the range area. I put on goggles and ear protection. Mike shows me how to hold the gun properly, and then hands it over. The gun is loaded with live ammunition (9mm Luger bullets). It’s a 9mm Smith and Weston standard issue RCMP service pistol, complete with the RCMP logo stamped in the side. It was weird, after all these years, having a real gun, in my hand, loaded, with 5 real bullets. It was a detached feeling. Anyway, I got over my feeling, and aimed carefully. And slowly, very very slowly, pulled the trigger. I felt a rush of air hit my goggles, and my hands snapped back a little, and there was a little hole in my target. This hole was pretty much exactly where the guys heart was. If my target had been a guy quietly standing there, waiting to be shot, I would have killed him in the one shot. I got 4 shots in the small center target, two in the arm, and the rest kind of clustered around the heart area. After all 15 shots, my arms were tired. My muscles even hurt for a few days afterwards.

It has been a while

Alright, so, the world changes quickly. An update on my last entry, we did lose the dog. About 27 hrs after the attack we put him down as there was more shaking than we had originally anticipated. It was heartbreaking, and I miss him terribly. Even now I can barely think of him without welling up.

Also, I started a new job on the Monday after that (July 16) . This caused me great joy at the beginning because I was finally back on a computer, and I was promised lots of work to do. This has since evolved into being not nearly as busy as I had hoped, and the challenge to create ways to make it seem like I'm doing work when in fact I am not. This I have truly excelled at. One of my co-workers is highly entertaining and keeps my ears full of helpful advice be it to become a cop, or to read one of the files he is working on. For some reason he seems to care about my life, something that I am not used to from people like him. My other co-workers love hearing about my personal life, and two of them know people in my life as well, which makes the stories a little more entertaining and the advice a little more relevant.

In other news I got a new toy which is much faster than my first one, and a lot of fun. I am not sure where I will store my motorbikes during the winter, but I hopefully have a month or two of snow free weather to figure this out. Leather, I have discovered, is one of my best friends as it keeps me safe and warm when all other things are against me.

School also recently started. With any luck my last day will be Dec 17, if I have bad luck, my last day will be sometime in April and I will get to curse the program for holding me back and charging me lots of money for another 4 months.  So far the one group I have is not fun. We'll see how that turns out in the long run.

The big event in my life are my future plans. Oh how it is confusing. In four days I find out for sure that the town will let me buy about an acre of land in the small town of Pelly Saskatchewan. Yes, this is a town of around 400 people, with all the basic amenities of life in town, and all the extra ones available within a hour drive on the highway. The plan has been to build the house of my dreams on this property. Yes, I have a floor plan ready and am just waiting to hear back from the builder on a cost estimate. This estimate will determine if I want to build or buy. I have put the worth somewhere around the $150,000 mark for the fully completed house, including garage. While I could buy an older house in the same town for around $60,000, my house would be bigger, customized, and on my wonderful land. The older house needs a lot of work, which would take a lot of time and effort. Of course funding for this new property and life would come from the sale of my condo downtown.  I am willing to do this because life out there is so much quieter than life here. As I sit and type I can hear the traffic on the main road, and the occasional siren reminding me that life is quickly moving around me. While sitting on the grass that is my new property I heard crickets and it was wonderful. The stars shine brightly and the world moves slowly. No stress, and little hurry. Many of you will wonder why I would like that, a year and a half ago I moved downtown to be close to school and work. After a year and a half of stress sitting in my shoulders, and hearing traffic, snow plows and sirens at any time of the day or night, I am ready to move to quieter ground. Yes, I will have to commute to work, but instead of sitting in traffic for an hour each way, I'll be driving 120 on the highway. I won't have a mortgage, or a very small one, and at 22, that is a great accomplishment. My close friends will know that I grew out of my party stage a while ago, and I'm settling into grownup life. And, as much as I thought that I was a city girl through and through, the city is driving me nuts, and I'm discovering that I'm a country kid at heart.

No, this is not a 100% concrete plan, as mentioned above, I can not move until January, maybe as late as May. A lot can change between now and then. But I like my plot of land with it's views of 10km of field and trees. Oh yeah, Saskatchewan has rolling hills, it's not as flat as people say.

Enough ranting for now, I really should do my homework that is due at midnight,

Melina

bike crash

it had rained, and i was heading to a friend's house
I was heading to his house, the setting sun glaring back at me in my side mirrors. Very distracting. I was going around 60km/hr. As I near the intersection of 104 ave and 106st I notice two pedestrians starting to cross the street. They notice me, and start to wait for me to pass. I slam on the breaks, and lean back (fearing an impact) to the right. The leaning causes my bike to lean, and my rear wheel to skid left. I go down. based on injuries, I started to role, but my left knee and hand hit the ground hard, and then I just slid back on my right side, and curled into a ball.

Vacation

yay, I'm going away for a week. I'll miss my riding buddies, and my bikes are going to be so lonely without me. I just hope one of them starts when I get back... or I'm going to be late for work that day. I'm going to visit my friend in rural Sask, so hopefully I'll de-stress nicely before I go back to the really hectic life of work and school. The good news is that in less than 4 months I'll be done with school for the foreseeable future, YAY. Can't wait to have all of my evenings back, I'm going to miss them. Hmm, gotta leave in an hour, I'm all packed though... sigh

This is why

The other option I have been looking into (and I know you don't understand why I want this at all) is small town Saskatchewan. The fact that I can buy a pretty nice house for $60k or one that needs work for $30k (or one built in 1992 with over 2100 sq feet for $245k) is a really interesting prospect. Because I work with the RCMP, I can request a transfer to one of the detachments in the area and have a job almost right away. The fact that I would not have a mortgage means that I could waitress and still put money away into savings. It would be a total change in lifestyle. But, whenever I would go out and visit my friend who lived outside the city, within an hour my shoulder muscles were totally relaxed. That never happens even when relaxing at home now. It's a different atmosphere which I really enjoy. There are three towns that have about 75,000 people in them, and many smaller towns around those bigger ones. Realistically the only thing keeping me in Edmonton right now is my school, my house and my job. School is almost over, house can be sold, and job can be transferred/a new one found. This is probably the only time in my life where I will have the freedom to just pick up and move. In a few years I will have the startings of a family, and starting that somewhere else is an option. Yes, this did start because my friend moved out there, but it's the starting reason, not the reason I've been looking into it for so long.

Tragedy

They found more swelling this afternoon.... and the shaking was worse than they originally thought... he was on a morphine drip, but there were complications with his Addisions disease... they put him on a weaker pain killer.... he was yelping randomly because of the pain.... He passed away at 9:35 tonight, less than 27 hr after he got attacked. This house is never going to be the same.