An 18-year-old South Florida resident was arrested in the slaying and mutilation of 19 Florida cats, and the arrest affidavit is just plain weird.

CNN’s article on the arrest said Tyler Weinman was insanely interested in the dissection of cats. He knew the process, and was actually linked to the last crime scene.

Sadly, staff doctors at the Miami-Dade Police Department determined that the suspected cat killer, Weinman, suffered from a form of conduct disorder. In other words, they said if the killer was an adult-they could be classified as a sociopath.

It is sad that this 18-year-old could possibly be the killer, and frightening. It reminds me that Jonesboro had cats turning up mutilated last year, which has since stopped though no one was ever arrested.

In happier news, I am working to complete my articles for the next edition of the Wynne Progress. I am currently working several features, and tonight I will be covering my first sports event for the newspaper: a baseball game.

I will attending the last American Legion game for the season, and I am not sure really how I am going to cover it. I know what the finished product should look like, but not how to get everything else. So…wish me luck!

Today is going so slowly.

I am trying to complete my work and find myself struggling to do so. I just want to sleep so badly!

Other than that, I do have interesting stories for this week’s Wynne Progress. I am talking to a restaurant chain owner on his new stores (Johnson’s Freeze Inn), the Village Creek Superintendent on maps/guides and tourism, and I am doing a weather update.

I’m slowly getting the stories done before my deadline, but I keep getting caught on stories for next week’s East Arkansas News-Leader.

In other news, I am slowly getting my apartment put together. I love the work done so far, and I’m ready to move in some more big furniture.

I took the last pictures for the 2009 Cross County Farm Family of the Year special section today. Boy, I am excited to be finished with pictures and stories, and to see it go to press! I am ready to see it in press-it should be pretty darn good!

I just passed my 1-month anniversary at my new job, and I have to admit I love it so far. Now, I’m just waiting to see if my new apartment goes smooth. I am still moving my stuff in and so far, all is good!

I may soon be moving into my own apartment!

I checked out two Wynne apartments Friday, and my parents and I both feel the first is perfect for me! It’s two bedrooms and one-and-a-half bath, and has a large (and I mean large) kitchen and a decent size living room. It is only five minutes from work, and the neighborhood is quiet. I believe I am going to like it!

I find out Wednesday when I can move in. Luckily, the landlords know my family so I do not have to waste time filling out an applications and having them call previous landlords. I would have no trouble with either one, but it’s nice to know that they trust the family!

In other news, I am still sore from umpiring the softball tournament Saturday. I had so many foul balls knock the crap out of my legs that I am practically black and blue! It was worth it though! I was on field 7-which was mostly 12 and under and 16 and under games. I was part of a three-woman rotation with two of the most seasoned umpires in our town (they umpired my games growing up) and for the most part had fun!

I had one bad moment though. At the end of the day, I threw my bag in to the umpire’s room and knocked over a long light bulb. I scared the heck out of myself, two guys and had a sheriff (who was married to one of the umpires) running into the room. It was horrible! But at least, afterwards, the room was swept and looking nice!

I am now an umpire for the Wynne girls softball league. I umpired my first game Friday after a 4-year retirement. It was actually fun-and I spent all day Saturday on the field umpiring as well. The rules have changed slightly so I am still trying to get in the hang of things. Hopefully though I will be able to umpire in the tournament coming up this weekend!

I am now finishing up my second week at the Wynne Progress, and I have way too many stories sitting on the back burner until I have time to get to them.

It has been an interesting two weeks so far. I have been mainly focusing on Wynne and Cross County schools since both districts are in the process of ending their school years and I began my Poinsett beat yesterday. For this beat, I have to make a circle and go to the city halls in Harrisburg, Trumann, Marked Tree and Earle.

I’ve already found interesting landmarks on the way that I am looking forward to stopping at in the future.

The most interesting news to come my way since I began has been the switch of assignments for Debbie Stepp. Stepp is the current head coach for volleyball and softball. She was the assistant coach when I was on the team, and my sister’s head coach when she played. In all, this is her seventh season coaching softball, which includes the recently won title of 5A state champions.

However, as of last week, she will now become the head boys and girls cross country coach and track coach. Interesting.

Besides work, I was able to have Wednesday off to make up for overtime hours and I spent the day taking Cindy to Memphis to take her ultra sound registration test. She passed with a 82 according to her preliminary score. So keep your fingers crossed that the score doesn’t change (except to go up ).

It was a fun trip and we ended the day celebrating my DZ lil sis’ 21st birthday with her. Cindy and I treated her to dinner at the Brickhouse with several of Whit’s other friends.

Tonight, I will finally be renewing my umpire career. Dad brought home my uniform last night, so my first game to referee is tonight at 6!

Today was my first day at The Wynne Progress. I believe I am going to like it.

I began the day with a mid-morning dedication of the Cross County Elementary School with Gov. Mike Beebe and followed the morning event with a photo opp at the Wynne Junior High Awards Banquet. I will be topping off the day with the Wynne School Board meeting tonight.

It was nice to eat lunch with my parents, and I was able to catch up with people in the community that I have not seen in a while. In other words, so far, so good. We’ll see about tomorrow!

I am finally back home in Wynne, Ark., after four months in DC completing an internship. I checked out of my Rockville, MD, apartment at 9:30 a.m. yesterday, and had just enough time yesterday to buy a pink ‘Washington, DC’ hoodie at Union Station as we passed through DC to get to BWI Airport.

Out of five suitcases, four suitcases were mine and they were heavy and a pain to get to the airport. Luckily, none of the suitcases were overweight. Well-one weighed in at 56 pounds, so the check-in attendant asked me if I wanted to just take out 5 pounds in items so I could avoid the $90 overweight fee. I took out both a blanket and my winter coat and still weighed in at 51 pounds. The attendant kindly said she would overlook the extra pound and let me go on without paying the extra fee. Thank goodness!

Security was another issue for mom and I. Mom’s carry-on was searched because she had an item that looked like a “fishbowl.” Turns out, it was a plastic green flower that was in a little bowl of fake water that mom gave me during her last visit.

I stupidly said as she pulled it out, “oh, it’s fake!” The security guard was sarcastic answering me, however, she still had to call her superviser over to check that it was okay to allow to pass. It was fake water for crying out loud! The superviser gave her approval so we were soon back on our way!

Cindy was on a separate flight than mom, Elizabeth and I so she made it to Little Rock 30 minutes after the rest of us landed. It was fine with me, however, since it gave us enough time to put our luggage in the car and talk to my dad-who met us at the airport.

Dad and I watched Cindy’s plane land on the real time flight tracker and it was pretty cool to track Cindy’s progress on the digital map and guess which plane-hers or a Houston plane-was landing first based on their altitude. While standing there, man waiting for the Houston plane said the plane, scheduled to land at 5 p.m. that day, had been delayed due to a malfunction in the landing gear-it would not go up once they started to leave the runway! The plane had to turn around and passengers had to board another plane. However, to further complicate the flight-they had to wait for weather to clear. I’m glad I was not on that flight!

Once Cindy’s plane landed, we were quickly on our way and only stopped once to grab some food. We arrived home around 11:30 p.m. and I had a pleasant surprise once there!

I am the new and proud owner of a Toyota Corolla S car!!! I am so excited. I was too out of it to do more than look at the car and accuse everyone of lying to me (jokingly of course).

This morning, however, was a different story! I drove it to church and everywhere. I love it!

Mom, Elizabeth and Cindy love Thai food.

We ate dinner at a Thai restaurant in Silver Spring, and they enjoyed the food despite their earlier misgivings. I was pretty excited! The meal was a welcome change to our day. After a late start, we visited the Smithsonian National Zoo and I was finally able to see Happy the Hippo and the baby gorilla. Afterwards, we set out to see the Hope Diamond at the Smithsonian Natural History Museum and stopped by the Smithsonian Castle. I must admit the jewelry at the Natural History Museum were my favorite items of the day (after the zoo of course!) and they were simply breathtaking!

We also visited the White House one last time since Cindy has never seen it. I do not think she was all that impressed-she kept saying she expected it to be bigger! We tried to find the perfect hoodie for me after visiting the White House, but to no such luck.

Oh well, I always have tomorrow. I have to check out of my apartment at 9:30 a.m., and our flight is at 5:15 p.m. We are planning to take in a few more stops before we leave for the airport. However, I have so much luggage that we are going to be packed when we leave the apartment tomorrow!

Well, I’m off to finish packing my luggage and cleaning the apartment!

I picked my mom, younger sister Elizabeth and my best friend Cindy up at BWI airport this morning, and we began the first day of their visit right!! I made it to the airport just in time to meet them at the baggage area and we were quickly able to pick up their luggage and hop back on a metro bus to DC.

We started off the visit by going straight to eat since we were all starving, and ate at Red Lobster in Silver Spring! Tonight we completed a three-and-a-half bus tour of the DC monuments which was fantasic. Our tour guide was hilerous, however the only downfall was the heavy rain during our visit to the Lincoln, Vietnam and Korea memorials. We were still able to have some fun though. See below: a picture of the group at the WWII Memorial.

Elizabeth, me, Cindy and Mom

After the tour, we decided to show Cindy Chinatown and stop at the McDonald’s there so Mom could get a burger. Ha, we got more than we bargained for after we met two cops who were more than friendly with us. They joked and scared Mom with scary stories about not eating the food-after we already ate the food-and pretended that they had a call to detain us. Mom actually stood up, put her hands on the wall and said “Frisk me!!” It was hilerous!!

It was after 1 a.m. when we finally got home from this, and we are all pretty worn out! However, there will be no sleeping in for us. We will be leaving bright and early for another day in DC!! First up: the zoo!