Woke up from a short nap and will go back to bed in a bit, but thought I'd do an update here while I'm awake. It has been quite the week, with snow and ice here in Texas. The daughter's apartment complex (under new management) decided that there were entirely too many cars around and to keep homeless from car-sleeping there (or something) they would tow cars whose license plates they did NOT have in their database.

They emailed the residents. (I'll bet you can guess what's coming.) We thought that because she'd registered her car for the gate codes to the complex (a system that wasn't implemented because they kinda failed to think through just how problematic an automatic gate can be (Uber/Lyft pickups, Amazon delivery, visitors, etc, etc) -- but they apparently didn't have her in the database because she walked out Saturday afternoon and found her car gone.

So she got the info from the office and at 3pm we went off to the towing company... which is across town (Dallas... think 40 minute drive). We get there, and -- holy smokes! They must have towed half of Dallas or something because there's 3 clerks and 20 plus people in the lobby and cars outside (it's freezing, btw) and we're told to "take a number and wait." We do. Someone we talked to had been there for 3 hours, waiting their turn.

And we wait...and wait...and wait...and as we do, some rather entitled jerk comes in and starts ragging on the poor clerks. Seems he had a number, went outside for a smoke and so forth and missed his number being called. And by the way, he hadn't filled out a form that they needed (we filled ours out.) He ranted at the clerk for quite awhile, and when she wouldn't allow him to be processed ahead of the next person, he swore at her and threatened her (she said she'd call the cops) and he storms off with his little temper tantrum.

And comes back just before they called our number (at 8 pm... yes, we'd been there for 4 hours) and we saw the same scene, part 2. A woman called to him to "just get a number," and I echoed her call. He finally did and stomped out. I got to the clerk and told her she did a good job handling the situation as I handed over the document and my drivers' license and insurance (I own the car.) There was a paper plate of food next to her.

"Oh goodness," I said. "You haven't had dinner yet."

"I came on at 10...and haven't had lunch or breakfast or dinner."

My daughter and I expressed sympathy, and she relaxed a bit and smiled. Our transaction went quickly and we were out the door. My daughter got her car and drove off. I had gone to my car and was waiting in an unlighted parking lot near the office. When I started to drive off, I found out that there was a ditch at the driveway of this unlighted parking lot.

Yeah. I was stuck real good. Luckily the towing office was across the street. I flagged down a tow truck driver and asked if he'd tow me out after he was finished and he agreed.

But while I waited, another tow truck came by and (figuring out somehow that I needed help) swung into the lot and very kindly pulled me out. I gave him all the cash I had (wasn't much) and was on my way.

Tonight was training with Indivisible to assist at protests (line control, medical help, etc.-- I'm interested in helping with medical) The last part of the training was by lawyers on how to do the official Legal Observer work (this is different from what Renee Good and Alex Pretti were doing) -- documenting things so that lawyers can have detailed evidence on who did what to whom.

By the way, we are NOT encouraged to record video.

I tried using Firefly.ai to record and summarize the meeting and it did a surprisingly nice job of it. Using AI for this allowed me to write down some thoughts and observations while making sure that the content I wanted would (the bullet points) would be preserved.

(I should mention that the training was at a church, which donated the room and some other resources for this training.)

It was quite interesting. We don't see a lot of violent action at protests in Dallas, and making sure that these groups have trained people helping with crowd control and defusing situations will help keep everyone (cops and crowd) safer.

It was a six hour session (and a 40 minute drive, of course, because... Dallas...) but we were both glad that we went. We both look forward to helping out the medical staff at upcoming events.