1. Sitting on the couch, watching TV, one o'clock in the morning. Sirens going by, then stopping. I look out the window, and am met with 6-7 police cars parked in front of the house and down the street. Long story short, we catch from a cop telling a bystander (taking multiple pictures) that it was car theft. I saw initially the police running, shouting. Then later, the caught men sitting on sidewalks, handcuffed. Policemen retrieving their dropped billy clubs from the street. All my neighbors doing the same thing: looking out their windows, or standing on the sidewalk. What a spectacle!
2. Next night, drifting off to sleep in bed. Hear a noise, Ian gets up. He says it's actually about the 3rd noise in a row, all seconds apart. He goes to look out the very windows we were glued to the night before, and I join him. On the other side of the street, also in front of our house, are 5-6 police cars, one girl crying on the sidewalk, her red BMW crashed into a parked car. Then we look up the street and see the havoc she's wreaked. Multiple hit cars, shoved on the sidewalk or under each other, all bashed in the side. What did this girl do?!? Even more neighbors in on watching these goings-on.
3. Walking to work the next morning, a van pulled over with their blinkers on. Only to realize it's because she's in some sort of slapping fight with another woman against a restaurant front. I hate fighting, but I couldn't even stop to call 911 because the slapping and kicking was such a farce. I had to shake my head and block out the screaming, crowd gathering mess. And this, only 8:30 in the morning.
4. Ian and I are on the couch this weekend, watching TV and an enormous truck drives by, rattling everything. But then the rattling doesn't really stop. And Ian and I look at each other, and the rattling is still rattling, and we realize it for what it is: an earthquake. It stops. Later, we look online and confirm it indeed was an earthquake, our first. A 4 on the richter scale. So small that my Mom doesn't even call me immediately to ask if I'm alright (which is what she did the last time there was an earthquake, the one Ian and I were oblivious to).
5. Ah, the weather! Another oddity. Past 2 weeks, like 80 degrees. Really unheard of. Which wouldn't be bad at all if San Francisco or the Bay Area ever heard of a little something called air conditioning. Sometimes, open windows don't cut it and all you can do is take a cold shower. Ironic that the day after Labor Day was like the first day of summer here, and I donned a white dress. Then last night, Ian and I watched...literally tracked the fog rolling in. We were greeted with a chilly grayness today that seemed entirely disparate from the sunshine of this weekend.
If I were an umbrella, my name would be Stan.
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