some excitement

I didn't realize it had been ten days since I last updated this blog! So much has been going on here. I studied for, and wrote, and managed to barely scrape a passing mark on a precalculus midterm last week. I juggled endless appointments. Then our family spent the weekend in Portland, mainly because we wanted to see the super-cool Star Wars exhibit at OMSI, the science museum there. In a moment of complete serendipity, Megan and I managed to catch the last showing of the Mary Poppins sing-a-long at a small independent movie theatre in the northwest part of the city. It was nearly as fun as the sing-a-long Sound of Music we attended in Toronto about five years ago - the only down side was that we didn't have enough notice to come in costume. (Yes, Megan and I are complete Julie Andrews geeks. Laugh as much as you like! I bet you can't top the half-day Sound of Music bus tour I took in Salzburg, Austria.) We also, of course, spent a couple of hours browsing in our favourite bookstore, Powell's City of Books. In all, a very fun weekend. And I now have an attractive lapel pin testifying that I got to spend five minutes sitting in a simulation of the Milennium Falcon cockpit. W00t!

OK, now on to the exciting stuff I promised in the title. We live on the ground floor of an apartment building with an underground parking garage, which is accessed by means of a noisy metal gate. Because we happen to live directly above the gate, any time it opens or closes, we can hear it moving back and forth through the floor of our home. Last night we learned that we can also hear quite clearly when some idiot is trying to break into the building via this gate. An "enterprising" young car thief woke Jeff and me up, rattling and shaking and bending the parking gate a little before 2 am today. Jeff cautiously went down to see if someone had a legitimate reason (ie, the gate being broken) to be making so much noise, and when he couldn't see anything, came back up here and called the police. We woke our next-door neighbour who is responsible for maintenance in our housing co-op, and the three of us went out to wait for them. Four or five cruisers showed up, including a canine unit. We stood at a safe distance while they apprehended and arrested the fellow, who unfortunately had managed to break into at least two cars in the garage before the cops showed up. It was quite awesome to see (and hear!) this dog doing police work. One of the officers approached us afterward to tell us that they rarely catch car thieves in the act. So Jeff can feel good about having been such a helpful citizen, although I'm not sure that our two neighbours whose cars were damaged will feel too happy this morning.

And for those of you who live in nice quiet safe places, yet occasionally envy us for our nice mountains and mild climate, I have just introduced you to one of the big down sides of living in the Vancouver area. Car crime is rampant here, and I doubt it'll get any better so long as the cost of living here is so outrageous. So take heart that although you have to deal with slush and big ugly piles of dirty snow that take months to melt, you don't have to wonder each morning, when you go to your car, whether it'll be intact or even there at all.