November 21st, 2007

Protecting Truth, Justice, and My Own Personal Belongings

I am not a proponent of citizens taking the law into their own hands. We have highly-trained forces in our cities and towns to deal with the scourge of crime. Most times it is idiotic and dangerous for laymen to get involved. Our brave and never condescending police squadrons can’t be everywhere at once though, and that means that, sometimes, we must do what we must do. Just days ago, I was involved in an altercation where I had no choice but to become a (Is “vigilante” too strong a word here? This incident was isolated, very brief, and extremely low-risk. It’s probably too strong. Still….) VIGILANTE. Not unlike Batman.

Perhaps you’d like to know the circumstances that drove me to administer my own firm-but-fair brand of street legislation?

Of course you would.

What happened, essentially, was some guy walked up to the office building where I work — and lock my new bike in front of — and crouched down next to my bike lock and started fiddling with it. I was in the hall at the time, so I didn’t see this person doing this, but my co-worker Vicky did and shouted to me “Someone’s messing with your bike!” and began pounding on her window at him. (Thank you Vicky. You are awesome.) I rushed into my office, peered out my window toward my bike, and met the eyes of a probably 18-year-old thug of a kid, who was probably up to no good. I swung around the corner to the lobby and burst out of our building’s front door, as threateningly as possible, hollering at him to stay away from my bike. My other co-worker Mike followed me out to make sure things went ok. (Mike, you also are awesome.) At this point he vacated the premises.

That’s it. It was an irritating, but totally innocuous occurrence. There were, however, some nuances that that basic description doesn’t cover….

For starters, I don’t think this guy was a very experienced larcener. He hadn’t considered his surroundings very carefully, anyway. I park my bike in a highly-traversed, widely-visible spot. This is how he noticed it I guess, but it also means that many, many other people could see him trying to jimmy the lock open. Our building’s “front yard” is a wide, flat, nearly featureless lawn buffering us from Western Blvd. — one of the busiest roads in Raleigh. He was in plain sight of passing motorists, who wouldn’t necessarily notice him, I realize, but if you’re a petty thief, would you want to risk it? If that weren’t enough of a threat, our offices are amply-windowed. All the other visitors we’ve had since I’ve been there have clearly noticed at least one of my department’s employees through our windows when approaching the building.

Not this dude.

I first laid eyes on him just as Vicky began banging away in her office and I saw the noise startle him. He had no idea our building was inhabited with people who were watching him. That was when I ran out flailing my arms and yelling. It all felt very much like shooing away an unwanted animal that had temporarily forgotten about the existence of humans.

He reacted by running back a few steps, mostly due to shock. Then, when he overcame that and realized he was being confronted by the person he was attempting to rob, he gave me this look as if to say “Oh! That’s yours!?! My bad.” and slunk away. Ambled. Practically hands-in-his-pockets, staring-into-the-sky, whistling-a-tune style. Meanwhile I bravely…stood there, uncertain of what to do.

For about the next full minute, he strolled for a few steps, then glanced back over his shoulder to see if I was coming after him, which I wasn’t. He was going away, which was all I could hope for, though I was pretty pissed about being just left there for so long, with nothing to do but leer with all of my might. Couldn’t he have had the decency to employ a nice medium-paced run? How about a jog? Hell, power-walking would have been fine. Why did he have to mosey?

I’m still trying to figure out what I could have done to drive home the point to this punk that I knew what he was up to and that his innocent act wasn’t fooling me. Taken my camera out there and snapped his picture maybe.

I have a pretty good bike lock, so I don’t know that he would have been able to get it off, but, not wanting any repeats of this encounter, I moved my ride inside. As I was stowing it in the corner of the old workshop room in the back of the building, I heard a surprised “There he goes!” from the offices. I checked in up front and they told me that, not even a minute later, the guy had rode back by on a shiny green mountain bike.

We called the police, who came over and had a kind of a difficult time understanding that the “perp” (if you will) hadn’t actually stolen anything from any of us, but that we were pretty certain he was now cruising down Western on a bike we were pretty sure he’d lifted from…somewhere…. I guess that is kind of confusing, now that I think about it.

Anyway, they took our names and ages and accounts of what happened and gave us the standard cop line about how they doubted they were going to find him. Another pox on society slips through the cracks.

Which is why I’m going to buy a utility belt. As soon as I can figure out where they sell them.

Tags: Happenings | No Comments »

November 13th, 2007

The Wife-Whale

This is a little late, but I wanted to share these pictures of Steph and I, taken at the Halloween party that Steph, Meg, and Bliss threw a few weeks ago. (This, by the way, is why I needed the pipe.)

This sea captain/whale combo is the first couple-costume Steph and I have ever donned. For a while now, I’ve held the opinion that couple-costumes are annoying. Whenever I see a Cleopatra and Mark Antony or a Romeo and Juliet, I can’t help but think these couples are overcompensating for some couple-shortfall they believe themselves, as a couple, to have. Why would they feel the need to be so…coupley? Recently, I’ve had a change of heart, though. It started when my friends JonScott and Sarah totally pulled off Mario and Luigi a few years ago. Friends Smitty and Nancy once did a great Laverne and Shirley. At the very same party the photos are from, friends Geoff and Regan showed up as Click and Clack from Car Talk. Brilliant. Now my official stance is: that couple-costumes — where the man plays a man and the woman plays a woman only — are annoying.

I’d planned to be a sea captain for over a month prior to the party (a role selected for its compatibility with my facial hair), and I’d set about gathering props at that time. Steph had the idea to be my whale two weeks before the party, but didn’t sit down and sew her outfit until about an hour before things got started. She finished with time to spare. Not even I knew she was capable of this. It was one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen. And, in addition to sweeping the “cutest” category of the costume contest that night, Steph propelled us into the winner’s circle for “best couple” as well. (And I’ll entertain no more comments about the suspiciousness of us receiving so much glory in a contest that we were overseeing. We won fair and square, people. Fair and square.)

In conclusion, this portrait is my favorite picture taken of me from probably the past 10 years of my life. Good job, Geoff.

Tags: Friends | No Comments »

November 6th, 2007

“We’ll Just Split the Difference”

Does the world need another blog? In a way, “no.” But in another, deeper, more philosophical way, “most definitely no.”

Kate, Kevin, and I aren’t letting this stop us though. We’ve recently started documenting the pretty much constant DIY-craziness that occurs at my parents’ house (and beyond) on a Blogger site called “Witchger Projects.”

My mom and dad have always done much of their own carpentry, automotive and home repair, landscaping, and sewing, as well as maintaining a few extracurricular creative endeavors. They’ve passed their love of doing these types of things on to all three of us. The house we grew up in was a major fixer-upper that always needed — and continues to need — serious attention. There are plenty of things to work on when we’re there, and, in the rare event that there isn’t, we’ll find something that needs fixing/assembling/rewiring/making/repurposing. It’s how we do our bonding.

Mostly, our blog exists just to show you all what we’ve been up to lately, but it could eventually become something of a reference site for fellow novice-DIYers. For people like us, after all, a big part of the process is learning what to do from those who have been through similar undertakings…especially if they’ve made a few undesirable mistakes along the way…and especially if they are bald, eccentric men who may or may not be our father….

Anyway, here’s the URL: http://witchgerprojects.com. Enjoy!

Tags: FYI | No Comments »