I managed to beg the use of the scanner out at the Academy, so my Before Dare pics are now up.

I worked the welfare office detail today. It's not my favorite detail, but it pays slightly more than most other details. I always try to bring enough reading material to last me for six hours, since this is a detail where all I do is sit at a desk and be a Police Presence. So today I brought a book that I was about halfway through, and another--a VI Warshawski mystery by Sara Paretsky that I'd picked up a while ago and had not yet gotten around to reading. Well, I finished up the first book after about 2 hours so I dove into the mystery.

And was totally aggravated in the first 50 pages. I've been a cop too long, I guess. I get annoyed when I see police portrayed as corrupt, incompetent assholes, and situations described where the police procedures used are totally unbelievable, inaccurate, and ridiculous--and depicted that way simply as a plot device to move the story forward. In fact, the story would fall apart if the procedures were accurate. I won't go into gruesome detail about all of the places the story fell apart for me, but suffice it to say that I was thoroughly annoyed and dearly wanted to chuck the book across the room. And I didn't bring any other books to read. Luckily I had a couple of magazines out in my car, otherwise I would have been stuck staring at food stamp posters for the next four hours. As it was, I was careful to not skim through the mags as is my usual method, and instead carefully read every word, so as to not run out of reading material before 2pm.