Birthdays & Valentines. Sushi & Movie Dates

Josiah's birthday was at the end of last week. I have been looking forward to cutting his hair that has been reaching his shoulders, covering his face and ears. It's Filipino tradition to wait until after his first year to cut his hair for the first time and to save a piece of his first hair cut. Josiah got a giant rubber ducky from his uncle Josh. But like everything else, he just grabbed it and used it as another thing to slide across the floor. 

Josiah has been exclusively cosleeping with his mommy, and needs to get used to sleeping alone in his crib and to be taken off of breast feeding by May. We plan on getting pregnant by May so we can deliver our second child by the time our oldest is two years old. 

For Josiah's first birthday party Rhea's finalized the e-vites and she and mom have been inviting all their guest list. Rhea's made over 300 pieces of lumpia, she's planning on making menudo and I'll be baking a few dozen cookies for snacking. 

At work we happened to have a combined birthday dessert bar to celebrate all coworkers that had birthdays this month. We had delicious apple turnovers, assorted home baked and some store bought cookies, cheesecake, banana pudding, chocolate covered strawberries, tres leches, tiramisu, and a few other desserts all plated and decorated to be a nicely set up dessert bar. I made sure to grab a plate of leftover desserts for the birthday boy and mommy to taste the goodness at home. 

I started this week recovering from a stiff leg and soreness from last weekend's Donna 5k race. I was so stiff for the better part of the week. I was craving more protein and eating bananas every day to try to counter the effects of a completely sore body. 

For Valentine's day we had a fried sushi as well as a shrimp/steak/chicken hibachi for lunch and pulled pork hoagie with vegetable soup, okra, tomatoes, baked sweet potato, and fries all to share with Josiah at Bono's BBQ for dinner. In between and after the meals out, we enjoyed a few great movies that we checked out from the library. 

The Space Between Us was a definite new favorite telling a story of a boy born on Mars with an enlarged heart and brittle bones and not accustomed to earth's gravity. As a late teen he finally comes to visit earth to experience life and falls in love. Very cool and cute story. Hitting Rhea's love for space and a great film for Valentines. 

This week we also watched Good Will Hunting for the first time. A self-taught genius who studies on his own time exclusively from books checked out at the library. Growing up in the ghetto he sees himself living a trouble making life with his friends forever but a professor sees his potential and partners with an unconventional counselor to meet his potential and interview him with multiple six figure jobs. 

We also enjoyed Patch Adams which is another Robin Williams classic costarring Monica Potter. A suicidal man checks himself into a mental health center only to find that the mental health doctor there did not even listen to or care about his wards. Williams made an impact and touched every patient in that mental health center and resolved to go to medical school and help people. I didn't get the chance to finish the movie before it was due back to the library because I worked 6 days this week, but Rhea loved it and I plan to check it back out soon.

Through all the film watching we've been inspired to watch more of these classic 90's films and widen our repertoire and film experience. 

While at work I tried out a few new apps that I fell in love with. Uber Eats though  many coworkers say it's too expensive, the delivery cost is about the same and it is a very convenient app that delivers otherwise non-deliverable food to my workplace... during times when I may run out of food or am without time to bring my dinner to work. 

An internet trend has passed this week of people changing their faces to what they would look like as the opposite gender. I tried an app called FaceApp and spent a lot of time this week putting my face not only through the gender filter, but trying on different facial hair patterns, an older and younger filter, a hollywood filter, and combinations of multiple filters. Very interesting, but you can still see the base bone structure and face remains throughout the filters. 

A few coworkers, while I was changing my face with FaceApp spent a lot of time watching hulu this week, so I was curious to hear about why to get hulu if I already have Netflix. Though hulu has commercials, it gives you access to the latest episodes of shows that are currently on television, and it has a variety of shows that are not available on Netflix. Among these shows are shows like the Profit, Shark Tank, Property Brothers, Fixer Upper, and Flip or Flop for me. And for the wife, Hell's Kitchen, Master Chef, Kitchen Nightmares, and the First 48. I've been looking for these shows for a long time, so I created an account and we've been enjoying hulu starting this week. 

This week we had the greatest news. I am moving to the Red Alpha shift! Since the beginning of my time at Jacksonville Sheriff's Office I had leaned towards and voiced my preference towards the Alpha shift which is 10:30 am-10:30pm. Prior to this job, those were my working and waking hours. Rather than waking up at 5am or 5pm, I can wake up at 9am and sleep at 11pm. This is awesome!

When I started with my trainer Sizzler during nights, he told me to never go to Alpha, saying "Alpha is where good dispatchers go to die." Alpha squad takes the heaviest load of calls from both the day and night shifts and handle twice as many calls but get less pay than the night squad. My trainer was warning that if I moved to that busy shift I might burn out like many past Alpha people and quit. Over the last year and a half, I've gotten so used to the rhythm of nights and forgot about Alpha until this latest shift bid came out. 

The biggest benefit will be that I'll be on the same schedule with my family. Rather than being asleep when they are awake and awake when they are asleep, I will be able to sleep, wake up, and eat with them every single day even on days I am working. 

Other than that I will have more access to overtime as the time I work will be right in the middle of the busiest times of the day, and I will be on the color squad that is more staffed. Since blue is obviously understaffed, it is the red squad that has access to come in during blue days and nights to do major overtime. This increases exponentially my earning potential. 

Some of the challenges include the different departments and businesses open that I am not used to. It's very easy at 3am to tell people that the other departments at the Sheriff's Office and road rangers with Florida highway patrol, community service units, reserved officers, different desks and substations will all be closed until 8am... now I will have to learn what these departments do and when to transfer or send those units. 

A minor inconvenience is that I will not be able to park in the underground garage directly under the memorial building. I will have to park across the street in the regular parking lot. Underground parking is available to HQ only between 5:30pm to 5:30am... so I can move my vehicle on my break during those times to have a faster exit when I move to Alpha. 

The tricky thing will be to train with all these new departments. I am not familiar with them myself and soon they want me to be teaching someone else how to utilize the day resources. I think that will push me to be a better dispatcher... but it will be a change and a challenge.