All I can think of when I see this headline is the old newswriting cliche that dog-bites-man is not news, man-bites-dog is:

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I need a quick Is Steph Paranoid? vote:

There has been a noteworthy increase in break-ins in the past month on my street and the immediate surrounding streets. The police, of course, have recommended keeping an eye out for "unusual activity."

Just now (about 20 minutes ago) I noticed there was a couple (man and woman) with 2 cars parked in front of our house (one right in front, one across the street). The man was on the ground working on his car, and the woman was just standing by the trunk talking to him and looking around.

People have car trouble. This is a fact of life. But with all the recent break-ins, everyone on my street is a little tense.

After about 10 minutes of fiddling with the car, the man got up, and the couple walked away hand in hand, down the street (which is totally residential -- there's no auto parts store or anything they would have been walking to).

So I texted Tim and he told me to call the non-emergency police number and just tell them what was going on. I called, and the woman was very nice, and while I was talking to her, the couple came walking back, each one got in a car, and drove away (the car that was being worked on was either fixed or was never broke in the first place).

I mean, if *I* were going to case a neighborhood in broad daylight, I wouldn't want to be obvious about it, right? I would do something like work on my car and have my partner casually look around the neighborhood.

Yes, people have car trouble. Yes, my street has had a huge jump in break-ins in the last month.

Calling the police: paranoid, or not?

According to the talk we got from our local cops, you did exactly the right thing. They added noting the model make and lic. number of any strange car (if you can) is also a help.

They added noting the model make and lic. number of any strange car (if you can) is also a help.

All I could see directly was make/model and color, but not plates, which I told the police line woman. There was no way for me to see the plates without going outside, which I really didn't want to do, even with Kato.

I may have also taken pictures from my window. (Funny how it felt *nothing* like being Veronica Mars.)

Sounds like you did what you should have done.

I've told you about my apartment break in in Chicago?

The street was being cased by a bunch of children - the burglers then knew when people were away for an appreciable length of time and broke in then.

So, I think that anything you see that raises your hackles is probably important.

All I can think of when I see this headline is the old newswriting cliche that dog-bites-man is not news, man-bites-dog is:

Well, to paraphrase Chekov, if you introduce a dog in the first act it needs to go off by the third.

You did absolutely the right thing, Steph. That was awfully suspicious behavior.

I get massively paranoid sometimes. My house is right outside the entrance/exit of an apartment complex, and people stop right in front sometimes, right in the road - to let people get out, or for no reason I can imagine. Sometimes they turn around in my driveway. There are plenty of parking spaces just inside the complex grounds, fifty feet away - why not use those? This is why I don't like going away and leaving my driveway obviously unoccupied for days.

When I lived in Minneapolis, an 8-year-old kid knocked on our door. While I was talking to him, he was trying to look around behind me. He asked me how much my roommate's bike was worth. He then told us his mom sent him to check all the apartments in the building....

I love having Kato in the house, because if anyone tried to break in, he'd be all over it. (Although then I worry that he might get killed because some fool would shoot him.)

My bigger worry is that, of the recent break-ins, 2 of them (one on my street) were initiated outside the house -- a woman got out of her car in her driveway, and some guys jumped out of the bushes (total cliche, right?) with guns. Apparently, because she has balls of STEEL, she shoved one of them away and got inside her house and called the police.

I'm less worried about the house being broken into while I'm here (although that's a worry), and more worried about getting in and out of my goddamn car in my own fucking driveway.

We have no bushes and no other obstructions to the line of sight, though, which makes me feel a little better. Not much, but a little.

Man arrested at large Hadron collider claims to be from the future.

What makes an April Fool's article from last year suddenly be so popular?

Man, I'm trying to streamline a process, and I've come up against a dead end of willpower. Urk. I know the next step. I'm just motivated out. I gots nothing, yo. Nothing.