Friday, April 2, 2010

It is finished...

Well, it's official... Brian is a homeowner!! We had the final walk-through at 9 am on Tuesday 3/30 and went to settlement 10 am... less than an hour later, Brian had the keys to his first house! WOO HOO!!! The sellers had asked to be allowed to stay a few extra days because of their moving situation, and it was written into the contract for them to be able to do that... it wasn't really a big deal because Brian's lease isn't up at his apartment until June anyway, but it was a little disappointing that we couldn't leave settlement and go straight over to the house to see it! But as of 5pm yesterday the sellers are gone and the house is EMPTY! I'm going over to the house as soon as I get out of work in the morning and I can't wait! Now we've got alot of painting ahead of us... and we've still got to buy some furniture, but otherwise things are moving along nicely!

After settlement, Brian & I decided to take a mini-road trip to Wegmans' in Hunt Valley, Maryland. Wegmans' is a GINORMOUS grocery store with tons and tons of neat stuff! I could seriously walk around that store for hours and probably never get bored! I might run out of money pretty quickly though... LoL After we did some shopping, Brian and I took our bags out to the car and went back inside to have lunch at the cafe. It was yummy! They're in the process of building a Wegmans' here in Harford County but it won't be open until Spring of 2011... I'm so excited! It feels like forever away but I'm sure it'll fly by...

I haven't really mentioned it before but for the next several months, my Tuesday evenings are going to be dedicated to attending classes for the 16th Annual Harford County Sheriff's Office Citizens' Police Academy - a 15 week program designed to provide residents with a better understanding of the Sheriff’s Office and its operations and to foster a partnership between the Sheriff’s Office and the communities it serves. I've wanted to participate in the Citizens' Police Academy for as long as I've been working at my job, but shift work made it difficult to commit to something with a rigid schedule. This year my schedule was alot more flexible and now here I am...

Weekly classroom instruction will include overviews of nearly every aspect of Sheriff’s Office operations, from patrol services and criminal investigation to the agency’s K-9 Unit, Dive Team, and Crisis Negotiation Team. Deputies will provide presentations on topics such as personal safety, drug identification, and gang activity. Students will supplement their classroom training with field trips to the Harford County Detention Center, the Harford County Emergency Operations Center, the Sheriff’s Office Evidence Collection Unit, and both the Northern and Southern Precincts.

As part of the Academy, students will have the opportunity to use the agency’s Firearms Training System. This state-of-the-art video training system lets students experience, in as realistic a setting as possible, the milliseconds in which police officers are sometimes forced to make life and death decisions.

This weeks class was at the Criminal Investigation Division (CID) and we discussed class 1 crimes (rapes, serious assaults, murders, suicides, etc.) - very interesting stuff!! We got to see some gory pictures, which everyone loves... and we also got to tour the Evidence Collection Unit (ECU) and learn how evidence is collected and preserved. I was chosen as an "assistant" to the detective who was showing us how they fingerprint items. I got to use a magnetic wand that is similar to an Etch-a-Sketch and I dusted a piece of paper for fingerprints. It was very cool! All this has got me thinking about taking some criminal justice classes, just to see what I think of them... I've thought about that before, but I've never actually taken steps to DO it. Maybe this Fall...

I can't believe how fast time is FLYING by... we're 1/4 of the way through 2010 already! Is it really April now?! April is my birthday month... in a few weeks I'll be turning the big 29... my last year in my 20's! Next year is the big 30! *GASP* I've been trying to be healthier for a few weeks now. This is my 3rd week on plan with Weight Watchers and this lazy girl has even gone to the gym a few times! Get outta town!! I know that undoing the damage I've done to my body over the past few years isn't going to happen overnight... it's going to take some time, but I've adopted the "No pain, no gain!" philosophy and I'm trying my best to take things one day at a time... so far, so good!

That's all for now... until next time! =)

~ me

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