Monica Kochelee

From time to time I hears stories on the news about how a young child from another country is brought to the United States for some kind of medical procedure that is not available in his/her country.  Sometimes it is an orthopedic situation, but most of the ones I can recall the best are regarding facial plastic surgery, correcting severe birth defects.  Sometimes I hear a follow up story about the child, months after the surgery about how the child’s life has benefited from the plastic surgery, and it truly makes me feel good. 

When I was in high school I knew a girl who was in a bad car accident that badly scarred her face.  I can’t recall ever seeing her after the accident, but other friends have told me that she did have several plastic surgery procedures done to reconstruct her face and that the results were very good.

I think that plastic surgeons perform a very important service, from correcting birth defects, reconstructing accident victims, and enhancing patients’ personal appearance.  There are many people who are very unhappy with their looks, and plastic surgery helps boost their self esteem, which helps them function better in their life.  So when my girlfriend told me that she was going to a Minnesota cosmetic surgery specialist to have a procedure done that will make her feel better about her appearance, I told her that she has my full support. 

According to this morning’s news, the police officers being questioned about the murder of the suspect who was killed while in custody are not cooperating. They have “lawyered up” instead of answering questions. According to what I’m hearing, they’ve been told that they are going to be fired if they don’t cooperate.

My own opinion of what they are accused of doing aside, I think that it is supposed to be everyone’s right to “lawyer up” and I think it is wrong to threaten to fire them for exercising that right! Whether it is LEGAL or not, I don’t know, this is just my own opinion of the matter.

Video games are big business, there is no doubt about it!  And prices vary a lot from store to store, both in the physical retail stores and in the Internet stores.  That’s why the Quickshop website is such a great resource to help find the best prices on video games, video game consoles, and the accessories.

Quickshop is a great website to search out the best prices on all video game consoles, such as the Playstation 3, and accessories such as the Halo 3 wireless headset.

Quickshop is a shopping engine that searches not just paid vendors, but ALL of the Internet stores for the product you are looking for.  So it is not searching a select few, but over 30,000 Internet stores!

What a horrible, sad, mess the local news has been this weekend. I’ve only heard bits and pieces, and tried to read up a little bit on the Internet through the Washington Post. Apparently last week a man was arrested and charged with killing a police officer. The arrest report says that the suspect was driving a truck and ran down (and dragged) a police officer, who died as a result of being run over and dragged.

The suspect was arrested and placed in an isolated cell, apart from other prisoners, in a jail that has had a bad reputation for lots of problems going on in the jail. While in isolation, the suspect was strangled, and his neck broken. It APPEARS that a police officer MIGHT have killed the suspect. Now all kinds of terrible things are happening, investigations by different agencies, etc. The medical examiner DID declare the suspect’s death a homicide, so someone is going to have to pay.

(The subject of vigilante justice is NOT being discussed here.)

IF the person who killed the suspect WAS in fact a police officer, I think it is a terrible thing on several levels. I don’t know if Maryland has a death penalty, but I would say that the police officer will be caught and at least sent to jail. Police officers might not last very long in jail, other inmates might kill him! So, for the life of one suspect, two police officers are dead. And the family of the dead suspect are naturally very upset and want justice for the dead suspect. What a mess!

One of the things I enjoy doing for “cheap entertainment” is going to whatever trade show happens to be taking place in a nearby town or city.  It really doesn’t matter what the subject is for the most part because I enjoy getting out of the house and learning about different products that are available out in the market.  One the most enjoyable parts of going to a trade show is looking at all of the beautiful trade show and store displays that are set up throughout the buildings that the show is in.

I like to walk around from one booth to another, admiring the many different beautiful display setups that are there.  Since my own parents are involved in going to trade shows to promote their business, I like to strike up conversations with the vendors and ask them questions about their displays.  It seems that the ones that I always think are outstanding in terms of beauty and quality were bought by the vendors from a company called Gilbert displays, so I am going to have to let my parents know to check them out the next time they are considering revamping their own trade show display booth!