Last day in Manvel

Today was my last day on the job that I've had for most of my life. I went in early to drink coffee with my friends at the Chevron. Some of them got together and bought me another cake complete with balloons, which was a total surprise. I wondered why Slick Atchison was hanging around. He must have had something to do with this. He retired from HPD and Brazoria County as an Investigator.

Another one of my friends, Alton Rogers, came in for the first time in a week because of his knee. He said that his knee locked up and his wife took him to the doctor but he found out that he only has some inflammation and swelling so no knee replacement is necessary. He was prescribed Hydrocodone, so I told him to hold onto them and we could sell them for some good money. We are both living on fixed incomes. Alton retired from the city of Houston as a health inspector. He then went to work for Brazoria County and retired a second time.

I went on into the office but Mike asked me to go on a code enforcement call with him. It turned out to be a good thing that I did because the call was on a group of roofing contractors that tried to give him a hard time. There was about 7 trucks in the yard of a house with two travel trailers in the yard, which is illegal. These guys are in for hurricane repairs and rented a house, paying $1,600 a month. They had rutted up the yard and tried to tell Mike that the owner knew about what was going on and had approved it. He called the real estate agent who was handling the property and told her, and I'm sure these guys will be looking for a new place to live soon.

I went into the office and asked Ethan about my identification card. He has a special program to make ID cards but was having trouble with mine. First it wouldn 't print in color then it wouldn't print the right dates. He was getting frustrated when it decided to work, so I got my new ID card with retired in red.....It sure made me feel funny to think that I am finally retired.

I went in and talked to the Chief. I also presented him with my memo about my on-call time. It is a city policy that anyone that is routinely on call shall be paid two hours of regular time for any days in which he/she is not called out and paid for it. The Chief never denied that I was owed the money, he only said that it was going to "leave a bad taste in the city's mouth". I didn't have much to say, and hope we can work this out without a lawsuit.

After leaving his office, Stella came to pick me up since I don't have my Expedition any more, and we met Kristine, Mike and later Adam for lunch at Emily's. We finally got away about 1 o'clock and went on home to bring the trailer to Rayford.

After loading stuff up, we got away about 4 o'clock. It was a non-eventful trip up the beltway and we got to the park about 5:30. Ricky had fixed some chili and picked up some tamales at HEB, so supper was fixed for us. Dee is getting over her foot operation, so she is laid up for awhile. It was a very good supper with good friends. We came home about 9:30.

My very first night of being retired.