My husband is currently at Tech Escort School in Alabama, learning how to handle hazardous materials, and I couldn't be happier. Upon his return, he'll receive a huge humpin' pay raise. I'm stoked. The Eberle Paso Robles 2004 Barbera is $25 a bottle. Now I can afford to drink it more than four times a year! For the past month, Mr. Daphne has been doing odd activities like playing basketball and changing tires to assure he is dexterous enough handle viruses, chemical warfare germs, spills, and other gooey messes without having to utter "oops" or "oh shit" while wearing Hazmat suits just like these:

[1]

And while it seems that playing basketball may be a weird thing to imagine the men and women in those suits doing, even weirder yet is to look at the picture above and have me tell you what's in the red bag the person in the yellow Hazmat is carrying as if it's going to melt through the plastic and erode the sidewalk beneath: cat poop sandwiches [2].

The cat poop sandwiches -- yes, cat poop and bread -- arrived at the Lake County Government Center Monday, May 8th, addressed to Superior Court Judge Nicholas Schiralli. Within minutes, the building was put under lockdown, and a Hazardous Materials team was called in to determine the contents of the letter. Eight team members ran tests to determine if the letter or three boxes found the previous day at different locations on the building's exterior contained explosives, radiation, chemical or biological agents. All tests came back negative. (This is, of course, because they did not run the "Codename Sylvester" series.)

The incident not only interfered with a capitol murder case being tried at the building, but also caused many people to be locked in or out of the building for hours, having to change plans with business associates and loved ones via cell phones. The culprit: Richard Carroll, a 42 year-old man with an apparent penchant for the bottle, who was already in jail, having been arrested three days earlier at the "R House of Brews" drinking establishment for "arguing and causing a disturbance." He was at the Lake County jail serving the drunken and disorderly charge he'd earned when the letter he'd sent prior to his arrest arrived.

Detective Robert Bridgeman interviewed Carroll at the jail, where he admitted to the wrongdoing. The month before, Carroll sent a similar package to Lake Superior Court Magistrate Michael Pagano, a judge who had overseen a ruling involving Carroll in yet another matter. Hazmat team members also handled the Pagano affair.

While I would have been totally pissed to have my day stopped dead in its track by this postal turd terrorist, I do find it interesting that Carroll's kitty care packages brought to light problems in the evacuation and disaster procedures [3] that the Government Center had not previously seen. Inconsistent use of metal detectors, an inadequate speaker system, and out-of-date package scanners all came to the forefront.

Thanks to the cat poop incident, each department has updated its evacuation plans, and Lake County Emergency Management Director Jeff Miller has made a point of distributing weather radios to the center for the sharing of information concerning tornados and other catastrophes. The radios had been sitting in his office since 2003. And the building will now be accessible through only three doors, and all employees will have to pass through scanners to enter.

Robert Carroll's need to mail cat poop sandwiches to the various legal officials he felt were hampering his drinking time probably cost Lake County a fair penny, and I will be surprised if he's not fined heavily for the offense. But, let's face it: cat poop is nothing compared to a pipe bomb or anything else he might have gotten his hands on. Leave it to a turd terrorist to show how shitty a government building's security might be.