House of the rising Moonglum

Which is good, because my faith in humanity was lowered considerably recently. I’m on the ADT (house alarm) contact list for a neighbor. I got a call the other day from ADT, and it appeared that the alarm was going off in their house. I had a very odd conversation with the ADT people, once I was unable to reach my neighbor (meaning he didn’t accidentally set it off) where I asked them what I was supposed to do. I didn’t really want to walk in on a couple burglars! It was pretty funny actually, they didn’t really want to tell me to go there, but clearly the whole point of the contact list is that you will show up when they call.

In any case, they informed me that the police were already called, and got my car description to give to the police. I showed up and sure enough the door was kicked in. Fortunately the police were there already, and they determined that the guy didn’t actually get in, but was scared off by the alarm. (And possibly the quick response by the police!) So I took the report, and waited for my neighbor to get home, while my wife went home to look up the alarm code which I forgot. That thing is LOUD! (Even the police said it hurt their ears.) The police were really great, and very helpful, I felt much safer after talking to them, but listening to their radio while they were in the house was crazy. There was madness going on in the neighborhood. And he had to leave in a hurry, sirens filling the night air for the rest of the evening. I guess people were walking the neighborhood trying to kick in doors. Sturdy doors and alarms are good! (Turns out they tried to kick in another door that held well enough to not set the alarm off.)

I have to say, I am completely impressed. Pretty much everywhere I have lived in the past (in Chicago) people have been really bad about shoveling. Both in terms of maintaining their property (e.g. shoveling the walk) and keeping the common way open (e.g. putting furniture in the spot that their car was and they did a crappy job shoveling out). I look up and down my street now though and almost all of the houses have a clean side walk after each of the many snows we have had this past week. In addition, there is no furniture blocking the street. I’ve even seen neighbors shoveling their neighbor’s walks. No one asked, they were just out and it seemed the right thing to do.

Color me impressed. My faith in humanity has gone up some.