Neighborhood

Our neighbor's house was burglarized yesterday in plain daylight. The great aunt is ALWAYS home taking care of the small children and the *one* time in like 5 years that she and everyone else left, someone broke in. I think they lost a laptop and maybe some other electronics.

Because the park is so close to our house we do get a lot of people walking/biking by at all hours of the day...and you just never know what people are up to.

Yesterday the cops came back to all our houses to ask if we were interested in forming a neighborhood watch group--we'd have monthly meetings, arrange to contact each other if there is anything odd happening around our houses, and do things like write letters to the city to request that additional lights be installed at the park or on the street. The cop was glad to hear that I was interested in being a part of the group and he told me to definitely call 911 immediately if anything seems weird in the neighborhood.

And then at 9:15 last night when Dave and I were watching a movie a different neighbor called to see if we could check on a gas leak at their house (they are out of town and their house sitter smelled gas but isn't there at the moment).

Since it was going to take at least an hour before PG&E could even come out to the house to check on it, we went over to see if it was something as simple as turning off the valve. We checked it and there appears to be a big hole in the supply line leading to the meter. We could actually hear the whooshing sound of the leak and see it blowing the grass around. I think the last 40 years of weed whacking and soggy soil around the pipe finally took its toll.

Since no one was home at their house to turn the lights on, we were out there with wrenches, a long pipe to slip over the wrench in case we needed extra torque to turn the valve, and a flashlight...talk about weird behavior being reported to the cops! I guess it isn't a good sign that no one called the cops on us...