SMB814's Journal

First things first...

YES, I AM STILL ALIVE, AND YES I AM STILL DWELLING IN LJ-LAND.

Sorry about the bold capslock, but, well, after a particular near-defriending instance last week because of my lack of living-ness, I thought it might be appropriate to emphasize that. :)

So anyway...hi, everyone! To everyone new on my f-list (or who hasn't actually seen me post anything since they friended me)...er, sorry about my lack of posts. I work fulltime at a university and am usually far too tired when I get home at night to write coherent LJ posts and, well, basically do anything except mindlessly browsing the internet and playing an occasional video game. Weekends aren't much better, since I have to share the internet with my family and catch up on everything else that I didn't get done during the rest of the week. So that leaves the bits and pieces of downtime that I have at work to actually post something...and, well, let's just say this semester has been THE busiest one I've ever seen. Seriously, I don't know why it was as crazy as it was (maybe it was the fact that the chair position of one of the programs I work for split into two, with two new people covering it, both of whom are highly strung at times?), but it was, and it took until last week before I finally caught up with all the major stuff on my plate. Hence why I can finally post here again. :)

So, since it has been so many months, I'm going to resort to the number list again in my efforts to cover everything.

( This is way too long so I'm cutting it to save your f-list from being completely overwhelmed. This cut covers Work and Vacation. )

( Current writing status/progress/miscellaneous info be here. )

( Video game talk be beneath here -- includes mentions of Tales of Vesperia, various other Tales games, Tales of Symphonia: Tethe'alla OVA, the Phoenix Wright saga, Brave Story, and one or two others. )

( A brief update on my Japanese studying progress, and some TV talk! )

( Chuck )

( Lost )

( Supernatural )

( Stargate Universe )

( A few other TV shows, like NCIS, Leverage, The Office... )

( And a few other miscellaneous life things. )

...And I think that covers the main things from the past few months. I'm cautiously optimistic that I'll be able to post more regularly again, but that depends entirely on how busy work is these next few weeks. And how distracted I get by writing and by working my way through more video games on my *gulp* 170+ video game backlog.

Take care, everyone, and I hope everyone on my f-list is doing well! :D

You know what? Society, the economy, thoughtless people, arrogant people, greedy people...it can all bite me. I'm getting pretty darn close to running away somewhere, burying my face in the sand to get away from all the stupidity, and never being seen again. Don't get me wrong, I want to live, but this world we're all currently stuck in is not a world I want to live in. And I don't have any idea what I can do to fix any of it.

They're "seriously considering" layoffs at the university where I work because they need to find $4 million dollars to balance the budget (never mind that we somehow jumped from needing $1.4 million to $4 million in the matter of, like, two months, and they're not explaining how things got to be this bad). Where I stand on the cutting block, I have absolutely no idea. They don't know, either -- or if they do, they're not telling us. We won't know for another month or so, once they make their final recommendations. So now I get to sit here for the next month, worrying about whether or not I'm going to have a job, health care, etc. next year. And knowing them, they probably won't let us know specifics about who's staying and who's leaving until some time after that.

I understand wanting to keep us all informed of where things stand, and I appreciate not being completely blindsided with this. But seriously? At least an entire month of being on edge, having no idea what the future holds for us, and no one giving us any details about where things stand? Couldn't they have found a better way to tell us than this, worrying and scaring people for a whole month? And what's worse is the administration has made it clear that they don't value staff. As far as they're concerned (or at least the impression they give us), we're all expendable. Yeah, that gives me, a staff member, a really terrific, loved feeling. The people I work with directly are great, and I trust them and respect them, but the rest of the university? Not so much...and especially not anymore, ever since this new administration came in.

And then to top it all off this morning, some idiot rear-ends me. I was turning left at a major intersection, and I couldn't go because *gasp* a car was coming the other direction, and he wasn't paying attention so he didn't stop and instead smacked me. Yep, that is exactly what I needed right now. At least no one was hurt and my car is still useable, but still, seriously? Life? Can you please lay off it for awhile?

Needless to say, I'm getting pretty close to losing it because I just don't want to deal with any of this right now. And I know everyone else is dealing with their own crap, too, and mine is pretty minimal compared to what's on everyone else's plates, but it still sucks. Life shouldn't be this way. Society shouldn't be this way. People shouldn't be this way. But greed and power and selfishness have tied everyone else's hands and created the horrible situation we're all currently stuck in. And to be honest, as a student of history, I'm afraid it's gotten to the point of being pretty much unfixable until something catastrophic happens that finally manages to reshift the balance of power. Whether or not the United States could survive something like that at this point without completely imploding, though, is the question. The Roman Empire thought they were too big to fall, too, but look at what happened there. It's all just a giant unknown right now.

Unsurprisingly, my writing muse has completely run off on me, too -- between being on vacation, getting the flu, and now all of this other stuff, Kitty is just nowhere to be found. Right now I could use the distraction of writing more than ever before, something happy to focus on outside of life's crap and get away from the stress for awhile -- and a way to vent and point out just where society has gone wrong in an effort to try to get people to see the stupidity for what it is for themselves -- but the stress itself is a muse-killer. Ugh, what a vicious, nasty cycle. I'm just going to have to force myself to sit and start writing again, whether I feel like it or not, and then hope something clicks at some point. Preferably without leaving a trail of crap in its wake.

...And now I have to try to find my motivation and morale and actually get some work done. Maybe pigs will start flying while I'm at it, too.

Here's hoping everyone else on my f-list is having a better day than I am.

Wow, seven months since my last update? Um...whoops?

I do have an excuse, though: life's been a tad crazy lately. Well, a little more than a 'tad.' More like a huge, honkin', Pacific Ocean-sized crazy. Yes, it's been that nuts.

To that end, I'm reverting to a numbered list because that seemed to work well the last time.

( Cut for excessive length. )

And I think that covers the basics of what I've been up to. Hopefully pretty soon I'll be able to start catching up with all the other things I haven't been able to do lately, like email and reading fic and playing games and all that other fun stuff.

(Oh, and bonus points to anyone who can identify where the quote in my icon came from. *g*)

For now, though, I have to run -- almost time to go home! Maybe now I'll be able to post a little more regularly again. I hope everyone on my flist is doing well!

Ugh, I really need to start updating more regularly. Really, I do.

So, let's see. I'm still studying Japanese. I'm nowhere near being able to read even simple text yet (I have too much vocabulary left to learn before I reach that point) or understand spoken dialogue, but every day I'm learning a little more about the grammar and a few more Kanji characters. At least I have Hiragana and Katakana down pretty well now.

Oh! My family took our trip to the Disneyland resort two weeks ago and absolutely LOVED it. We've never been out there before (we've always gone to Florida since it's considerably closer to Wisconsin than California is), but we found a few great deals on airfare, ticket prices, and hotel prices and had to jump. I didn't think my parents would like it since they'd never expressed interest in going there ever before, but they loved it just as much as I did. In fact, if I were to compare the Magic Kingdom in Florida (not including EPCOT, the Studios, or Animal Kingdom) to Disneyland in California (not including the California Adventure park, just their Magic Kingdom equivalent), I almost liked Disneyland beter. Their "Pirates of the Caribbean" is two times longer, FCOL! Their Space Mountain is an absolutely awesome ride (unlike the Florida version, which is DEFINITELY showing its age in all the bumps and sheer jerkiness)! Their Autopia is actually an enjoyable drive, through a lovely park and with cars that aren't ridiculously difficult to control! They have an excellent Indiana Jones ride! They have the submarines and Nemo! They have Roger Rabbit's Car Toon Spin (basically a teacup on a dark ride track)! They have Mr. Toad! They have some amazing miniature displays in the Storybookland Canal! Granted, the Splash Mountain, Winnie the Pooh, and Buzz Lightyear rides in Florida put theirs to shame, their Matterhorn did nothing for me (it actually reminded me of the Space Mountain in Florida), and their castle is miniscule (we lost track of how many times we couldn't see the castle past the trees, and the first time I saw it I burst into laughter and called it "cute," which really isn't how an iconic castle like that should be described), but I still really, really enjoyed it.

Disney's California Adventure I wasn't quite as enthralled with, but I still enjoyed it. Maybe it's because most of their "big" rides and attractions there are almost identical to the ones in Florida -- Tower of Terror, Soarin', Muppetvision 3D, It's Tough to Be a Bug -- or maybe it's because the whole Paradise Pier, carnival-ride type attractions do nothing for me, but we didn't spend as much time there. Of course, they have some awesome sourdough bread (at the Bourdin bakery, where we ate a LOT of lunches), California Screamin' is a great roller coaster, Mulholland Madness was fun enough, we loved both parades we saw there, the Monsters, Inc. ride was cute, and their Aladdin show is phenomenal, so it definitely wasn't a complete waste. I'm sure if I liked water rides more, I would've given Grizzly Bear Run a try, but I just don't see the appeal in walking around a park completely drenched so we avoided that one.

The weather there was amazing. After the winter we just had in Wisconsin, we needed the sun and 60-80 degrees like you wouldn't believe. Flights were great -- both were on time, we bought the signature seats so we were comfortable and had plenty of leg room for the 3 1/2-4 hour trip, and we didn't have a cloud in the sky flying out there, so we got to see everything well. Even coming back, the sky was mostly clear. Not having seen the Rocky Mountains in years, that was a real treat. Our room, too, was wonderful. We stayed at the Disneyland Hotel, which was about a ten minute walk (through Downtown Disney) from both parks. I would happily stay there again -- big rooms, comfortable beds, decent food. All in all, an excellent, much-needed trip with lots of familiar sights but plenty of new stuff and exploration as well. I definitely see myself planning another trip out there in the next few years, and seeing a different park than the one I'm used to just made me want to go to Tokyo Disney (which is supposed to be spectacular) even more than I did before.

"Frozen Flame" revisions are still crawling along -- generally about a few paragraphs a day, depending on the size of the paragraphs. Unfortunately, I also haven't felt like working on that Daniel/Vala fic on my plate lately, so I've fallen way behind on that, too -- sorry about that, Misty. :( I just haven't felt motivated to really focus on either of them at the moment (probably because I'm also working on proofreading a book on urban education struggles during my free time for someone at work), but I'm sure that will change eventually. Experience has taught me that my interests tend to be cyclical. For a few months I'll be in writing mode, then I'll switch to watching DVDs, and then I'll switch to video games, then I'll switch back to writing mode, etc. Right now I'm heavily in video game mode, and I have been since I delved into Final Fantasy XII last fall. And that's perfectly fine with me, seeing as I have roughly 100 RPGs backlisted that I haven't even touched yet. *gulps*

And speaking of RPGs...Tales of the Abyss has eaten my soul. Seriously. No, maybe it's not the greatest game ever, but it's pretty darn good, with awesome characters *points to icon and would huggle Guy except the poor guy would undoubtedly run away screaming* and even more awesome character development and interaction. And the battle system is FUN! It's even knocked Kingdom Hearts II out of my top three favorite games ever list -- and anyone who knows me knows that's saying a lot. I'm on my third playthrough already and I suspect I'm literally going to have to force myself not to start another playthrough of game so I can finally play a different game. Hopefully this time I can finish up everything I still haven't done in my previous two playthroughs (like maxing out my levels so I can beat Nebilim on Very Hard and/or Unknown mode, mastering Dragon Buster, and completing the Collector's Book) so I'm not tempted to play it yet again -- because I know I would be. It's just that much fun.

Oh, and so I can quickly find it again later -- link to my all-time favorite Guy/Natalia fic: And the Clock Struck Twelve. Not only does it make me SQUEE!!! every time I read it, but it makes me really wish I had a storyline so I could tackle writing that pairing myself. I wish the author had included a focus on Guy's struggles to overcome his gynophobia, but I can understand why she didn't for the sake of the story. But oh, how tempting it is to write a fic with more of that angle to it.... Too bad her sequel to it is solely Luke/Tear, a pairing that, while canon, I'm pretty much indifferent to. :(

Also on the video game front, this past weeked I finally caved and bought a Playstation Portable. Like I really needed to spend even more money right now. But I'm dying to play "Tales of Destiny 2" and "Tales of Rebirth" (even if they're all in Japanese), and I'm curious about what happens in Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII, and, well, there are quite a few other RPGs out for that system that I'm itching to play, and the PSP was the only feasible option for being able to do so. Yes, I AM an JRPG addict and have been since I was eight, thankyouverymuch. But then -- the icing on the cake -- was when I discovered that I could take any DVD in my collection, convert it to a .mp4 file, and watch it on the PSP. That means I can take an entire season of a TV show, put it on a single memory card, and watch it while on a road trip! I've already started converting my favorite Stargate eps, and I plan on working on Farscape and X-Files next. It takes awhile to convert them (a little over an hour for each episode), but the quality still comes through beautifully. Needless to say, the PSP just became my new favorite toy. :)

In not-so-happy news, summer is coming up, and after everything that happened last summer, I'm dreading it. My neighborhood still isn't doing real well. The elderly woman who lives across the street from us had her purse stolen at the Walgreens just down the road. A drug dealer was shot at the same Walgreens. Three people were caught breaking into a gas station two blocks from our house just yesterday morning. Our neighborhood block watch is disbanding because the woman in charge doesn't want to do it anymore, and I don't have the time or leadership abilities to take a job like that upon myself. I'm guessing we have a week or two before anything starts happening (closer to when school gets out for the summer, judging from the past two years), but I wouldn't doubt that some stupid kids with nothing better to do decide to come back to our house and try to break in again. And with the economy crashing around us and gas prices so atrocious, I fully expect the state of the neighborhood to get even worse. I've already evacuated my DVD, CD, and game collections to other places so they're not sitting around inside the house in the event of another break-in, but it really is a pain dragging things I think I might want home on weekends. *sigh* Tell me again why the world is this way?

But enough of that, since I made a point last fall to be as upbeat as possible and enjoy myself during the months where I don't have to worry as much about that kind of crap. Besides, I really should get back to work...not that I have a lot to do right now when I'm still waiting for people to start turning in their course evaluations. At least I get to play on the internet while I'm waiting.

I hope everyone on my f-list is doing well!

This will never end. Or, if it does end, it won't end well. My sanity is very nearly a lost cause right now as it is.

We were hit again today. Yes, again.

Again, they didn't get anything from us. Again, we didn't catch them. Again, we have to spend hundreds of dollars to fix the damage they've caused us.

Five times total now. This time they wrecked our back door, trying to get it open. When that didn't work, they busted out our den window, both the inner window and the storm window on the outside. They neatly placed the glass pieces into the basement window well but must have been wearing gloves because the police didn't find any fingerprints.

They ran into my parents' bedroom, dumped the top drawer of their dresser, and ran back out before the security system could even alert anyone. That was all they did. They were out of the house by the time the pastors at my dad's church got there.

There was absolutely no point in it. They didn't get any money. They didn't take any valuables. They didn't even take the change that was sitting on top of the dresser. All that's left in that drawer is junk; we moved anything of value out of there weeks ago.

And it can't be the same kids. It can't. Anyone who's been in our house knows there's no reason to bust through the back door, because that only leads to the breezeway. The door between the breezeway and the house has a dead bolt. They wouldn't have been able to get in that way anyway.

And here's the kicker -- we just talked to the Alderman about all of this last night. After last week's incident, we sent him an email and then sent him a copy of that email via certified mail. His office called us back, and we (and half of the neighborhood -- 18 people total met with him, representing 12 different households) met with him last night, at our house, and described what's been going on. He was extremely impressed with how many people showed up, and he was appalled at everything that's been happening. He also promised us he would talk to the police, talk to the apartment owners where we think the problem is stemming from, and get more police patrols through our area. I walked away from it feeling very positive that something would change.

Not that he's had enough time for it to start making a difference. There's a lot of work he needs to do on his end, and I don't know that my sanity has enough time left for it to make any difference. Because these bastards just won't leave us alone.

I'm starting to think this isn't about the money for these creeps, since they're not getting anything anyway. They're breaking in to be spiteful and malicious. Maybe it's a gang initiation -- break into this house, steal something (anything), and get out. Maybe it's personal. Maybe they're bored (or, as one policeman said, maybe their parents don't trust them and won't even let them in the house anymore) and it's "fun" to terrorize us. Maybe it's all a game for them. Maybe someone bragged about it in a room full of 15 people, and now every single one of them is checking us out for themselves.

Repeat victimization is very common. They're familiar with the place, they know what we have, they know how to get in and out of the place. It's "easy" for them. They probably get off on getting away with it and causing us grief. Heck, they're probably laughing about it right now, about how they "bested" us this time.

And then we heard that a house several streets over, with a security system, was broken into. They tore the system right out of the wall. At least that time they think they got a fingerprint.

It's lovely to know that everyone in the neighborhood cares so much about us, about reclaiming this area, and about seeing justice done. But that's not helping us when no one's ever home during the day when all of this is happening.

So I ran out this afternoon and picked up Babylon 5 and season 1 of Supernatural. I needed to do something that felt normal, something that made me feel like I wasn't letting them control my life. Because Heaven knows how out of control I feel right now, about everything in my life.

I've lost too much this past year. Friends, peace of mind, a safe place of my own, self confidence, optimism, hope for the future, any remaining innocence I still possessed. I don't know what God's purpose for all of this is. I don't know if God has abandoned us altogether, or if all of this is supposed to be happening for a reason.

To top off everything else, yesterday was my birthday. I don't celebrate it, and I don't make a big deal out of it, but I do acknowledge it, it makes me feel like I matter when other people remember and acknowledge it (but don't make a big deal out of it), and I usually try to do something to treat myself. I'm just of the opinion that it really only affects three people in my life -- me and my parents -- and the last thing in the world I want to do is tell everyone about it and make them feel obligated to do something for me. And I finally realized yesterday why I took that approach to my birthday all those years ago, why I do everything in my power to avoid people on that day: because it hurts too much to be forgotten. It's happened too many times throughout my life, and so I guess my way of dealing with it is to keep that information from everyone else and avoid them. If they don't know about it, they can't forget me, and therefore they can't hurt me.

And then my mom forgot all about it yesterday morning. And it nearly killed my already-devastated psyche and resurrected all those emotions I've been fighting the past year or so of feeling invisible and insignificant and like no one cares whether or not I exist. I felt sick. I felt sub-human. I felt like the world had rejected me.

Happy birthday to me.

I honestly don't know how much more of this I can take. Bits and pieces of my sanity and humanity are flickering away every day. And underneath it all, I'm finding that, above everything else, I am a f*cked up mess with more issues than Time magazine. And I don't know how to fix 'me' anymore. I'm going to the doctor on Friday to get a check-up and make sure there's nothing physically wrong with me, exacerbating this trauma even further and making it that much worse, but then I'm thinking I need to see a psychiatrist, preferably before I'm a basket case and self-destruct any further than I already have.

I'm losing touch with 'me,' and I'm not liking what's left. And I don't have a clue what to do about it anymore.

But that's far more than enough whining for now. Sorry about that, everyone. Now I have to go help my parents fix yet another window.

So, apparently the news I posted last time about our resident burglar getting shot in the head during a burglary attempt turned out to be an overzealous story. Not necessarily by our neighbor -- he wouldn't make that up -- but by whoever told him that story.

I've now heard four different versions of what happened two blocks away from our house a few weeks ago. One was the story I posted last time. Another is that a kid was shot in the butt walking down the street by someone he knew, but while he knew the person who shot him, he had no idea *why* that person shot him. A third story is that a kid was shot in the butt while trying to steal computer equipment. A fourth just said it was a "family dispute."

Cops aren't talking about what happened, so we have no idea what really happened. All we know is that there were four squad cars, a handful of detectives there, and some yellow tape marking off the area. Oh, and we know whatever really happened, it wasn't our burglar(s) who were shot.

We know that because they broke into our house. Again. Yesterday morning.

Around ten in the morning, the alarm system went off. ADT called my dad's cell phone; he immediately called my mom (who works five minutes away from our home); she grabbed two tough guys from where she worked; they went to the house. The kids were still inside the house when they got there. The three of them walked around the house, looking for the entry point, but they couldn't find it, although one of the men saw someone in a white shirt inside. While they were in the back yard, the kids made a break for it out the front yard -- it turns out they had kicked in the siding on the air conditioner again and put the board back up, so naturally, on a quick exam, no one noticed that there was anything wrong with it. They got back out again the way they got in -- the only other way out would have been to break a window, because our front door has a dead bolt on it.

Our next door neighbor saw the two kids running down the street and gave a description to the police. A man outside a few blocks away saw the same two kids walking down the street a little later (and he'd seen them go up the street before). He came and talked to the police and told them what direction the kids went. He also said it didn't look like they were carrying anything and their pockets appeared to be empty. As far as we can tell, they didn't get anything this time except ten seconds away from being caught because, duh, we don't keep any money anywhere anyone can easily access it anymore.

*buries head in hands*

It's two black kids, apparently between 12 and 15 years of age. Two bored little adrenaline-addicted, game-playing brats have been the ones repeatedly terrorizing our home. Why am I not surprised when kids are breaking into Target stores with sledgehammers and breaking open video game display cases so they can steal the games? When 11 year old kids are holding up a local George Webb restaurant? When kids are going to county fairs and scratching up hundreds of cars with keys? This is what the city of Milwaukee has been reduced to, because no one is allowed to punish these kids anymore, claiming it's all "child abuse."

Parents and schools aren't teaching their students responsibility. Parents and schools aren't teaching their children right from wrong. Parents are, instead, crying bloody murder anytime anyone tries to tell them that their child did anything wrong. And it's innocent, law-abiding, hardworking citizens who are paying the price for it.

This society is going down the tubes, and all we can do is watch. The historian in me predicts that the country will eventually cave in on itself, as Rome did, because these kids are our future. It's a future that terrifies me. This isn't a world I want to live in.

These kids probably thought we were bluffing with the ADT sign. That, or they figured Milwaukee's police would take a half hour to respond, and they'd be long out of there before that, because OF COURSE they knew where we kept all our money! *rolls eyes*

I'd like to say the nightmare is all over and they won't be back again now that they've had such a close call and didn't get anything, but the truth is, these arrogant little bastards (please excuse my language) are way too bold NOT to try it again. We've been leaving cars out in the driveway so it looks like someone's home; that didn't stop them this time. We've been leaving lights on and the air conditioning on inside the house; that didn't stop them, either. They didn't care that the alarms were all going off; they stayed in the house. They don't care if someone's home; they're just going to barge in and take what they want. And I'm afraid next time they're going to either retaliate by vandalizing or destroying our house or cars, bring guns with them, or come with a bigger group of kids who can beat the crap out of anyone who tries to stop them. I'd say I'm being paranoid, but it happened in another neighborhood not too far from ours just two nights ago.

At least the alarm system has already paid for itself -- I can't imagine what our house would have looked like this time if we hadn't stopped them from spending a half hour inside the house like it appears they did last time. We don't HAVE anything left in the house of value for them to steal (and I would've thought they'd have figured that out the last time when they scoured the place), so they would've had to tear apart EVERYTHING just to find something, and if they hadn't found something, they would've gotten frustrated and started demolishing things.

Oh, and the small window alarms we'd put all over the window with the air conditioning apparently at least pissed them off and frustrated them. My dad had glued them on (because these kids had turned them off the last time), and the only way they could get to shut them up was to flush them down the toilet. Granted, we had to get the plumber to come in this morning because the alarms got stuck in the toilet and were continuously chirping (yes, that's right, the alarms kept going even after being submerged in water), but I can't help smirking knowing it at least wasted some of their precious time inside the house.

I just worry, too, that even if these kids are finally scared off from our house for good, they'll just start it up with someone else's house. They've made too much money off of this string of robberies (and probably had too much fun) to give up this life of crime. At least now we have general descriptions of who we're looking for, and half the neighborhood is keeping their eyes open for them.

Moving is now definitely on the agenda for the next year or two. Even if these kids are caught and punished (i.e. not just given a slap on the wrist), we can't stay in a house where we've been violated this repeatedly. It doesn't feel like a safe haven anymore, and it never will again. We just don't know where we want to go or what kind of house to look for.

*sighs* This has, without a doubt, been the Year From Hell. Can it please, please, please be over now?

So, an update on the ongoing saga/insanity at home with the robberies and, now, harassment.

Our house wasn't hit last week, but a neighbor's was. They broke in through a side window, stole the family's laptop computer, and walked out the back door. The neighbors had seen someone walking up and down the street three times (gee, not suspicious AT ALL) and gave a description. The guy who was robbed drove around and around the neighborhood, looking for someone, and -- get this -- actually SAW the kid, with his computer in his hands, outside an apartment building near their house. He started going after the guy, but the guy ran into the apartment, and then three or four other guys came out of the apartment. Needless to say, he backed off.

The Milwaukee police took FOUR HOURS to respond to his call. I guess our 1 1/2 hour response time was great compared to what it could have been. By then, though, of course, there wouldn't be any evidence left. I'm sure that computer was sold immediately after that. But the guy did see this kid's face, good.

The next day, our next door neighbor noticed someone on the street who looked suspicious. She slowed her car down, and the guy hid his face under his hood. Gee, also not suspicious. Nope. Not in the least.

We got a security system last week (ADT). Expensive, but ultimately we didn't have a choice in the matter anymore. This creep/these creeps just refuse to leave our neighborhood -- and us -- alone.

So things have been quiet for a week...until last night, when they decided to steal the ADT sign outside our house. Didn't take anyone else's security signs, but they took ours. Basically, that's the equivalent of giving us the finger. We're guessing they came back to steal our cars with the keys they took from us this last time, but got pissed at us for changing the locks. Idiots. Because, you know, I was going to HAPPILY hand over my car to you. *rolls eyes*

I bought a lock for my computer and monitor, so at least it'll take them awhile to find a way to take it with them. And the longer it takes them to get anything valuable inside the house, the more likely they'll be to get noticed and caught. But I have a hunch next time they hit us (because obviously they're not bored of "playing" this "game" with us yet), it won't be to steal anything. It'll be to destroy things, maybe even the house itself. I could see this turning into someone throwing a pipe bomb through the window and running off, laughing hysterically at the "power" they have over us. Hey, it's happened elsewhere in the city, and within the past few days, at that.

So I moved even more stuff out of the house. Everything on my computer (which is home again) is backed up in case they destroy the thing or steal the hard drive. Everything extremely important is on me at all times.

This is no way to live, though. I'm getting so, so tired of all of it, living out of other people's houses and sitting with a baseball bat consantly beside me and having to run to the window any time I see movement outside. These kids (probably late teens/early twenties, judging from the few descriptions we've had) are nothing short of terrorists. Money and possessions mean nothing to us, but the loss of your peace of mind and feeling of safety and security and being able to function like a human being without being paranoid about everyone around you is irreplaceable. And why? Because these idiots are hooked on drugs, or bored, or "practicing making trouble" or just that miserable with life that they decide to make everyone else miserable, too.

We did nothing to them but try to protect our own possessions. We put in glass block windows; they decided to trash our house to "get even" with us for trying to take away something they apparently now see as theirs. We get a security system; they give us the finger. I'm sure they're planning something else. Heck, they probably just think we put the sign outside to scare them off and don't really have a system. I'm scared. I want to move out of the area -- out of the city -- but where do we go? Because we didn't WANT to move, it's not like we have a destination in mind, other than somewhere that we get a better police response time than 4 hours. You can't just drop everything and move, either; moving takes time, especially since we've been in this house for nearly 35 years, have a ton of stuff to go through, and have lots of upkeep to do to it yet, just so we can try selling it for a reasonable price.

And you know what's the worst part of all this? Coming to the realization that, if I was home alone the next time these creeps hit, I have the capability in me to beat them to a bloody pulp and potentially kill them. I never, ever wanted to come to that realization about myself, because it's not pretty. But it's realistic. Out of self-defense, I could kill a person. Especially knowing that, even if they're caught, they'll probably either get off scot-free on a technicality or will only be sentenced to a month or two in prison, because laws are just that lax nowadays. And they certainly won't feel bad for everything they've done.

I can't understand this mindset that people nowadays have, the lack of caring and the "entitlement" attitude people seem to have. "If I can't have it, you can't either." I don't want to understand it, because the mind of a monster is an ugly, ugly place. How did life get to be this messed up? How do we fix it? Is it even possible anymore?

What else can my family do? We reported the incident this morning to the police, and I just looked up a whole mess of phone numbers/email addresses for our alderman and police department and other assorted things. But this isn't going to stop until these kids are caught or get so bored that they move on to someone else to target. And as much as I want my life back, I wouldn't wish what we've been going through on anyone else.

Does anyone on my flist have ANY idea what else we could do to stop this continued harassment? Any idea whatsoever?

It's well after 11 p.m., Joy already knows I'm not going in to work tomorrow, and I'm positive it's going to take me forever to fall asleep tonight, so here I am writing in my LJ because I need some semblance of catharsis.

Last week we put in glass block windows in our basement windows. Over the weekend we also started cutting down the lower branches of the trees along the culprit side of the house so it opened up the area and made it more visible. We also bought window alarms so that if a window ever moved, an alarm would sound.

Instead of breaking in the downstairs window, they busted in the siding on my parents' air conditioner (this person is small, because very few people would be able to fit through a window of that size). They disabled the alarm on the window. They then tore apart my parents' room, the den (with my parents' computer), the bathroom, the kitchen, and the living room, looking for money. When they only found about $200 (that we know of), they decided to take my parents' flatscreen computer monitor and keyboard. The monitor would fetch a pretty penny; the keyboard makes no sense. They also took three sets of car keys, one for each of our cars. Once again, I got off lucky that they never bothered going upstairs.

The police found absolutely nothing except a single set of bike tracks leading from our window to the cul-de-sac behind our house. No one in the area saw or heard anything...and people were actually home. Some were even out in their yards. They left no fingerprints (at least not that the police could find) or blood samples or anything else we can use to find out who did it. We have no way of finding the person who did this.

I packed up all my video game stuff and DVD sets and sent it off to a friend's house, not just so this person doesn't take any of it, but so it's not damaged when my room becomes their next target. If this burglar took car keys, he/she is planning on coming back when they're in a pinch and trying to swipe our cars. Next time this person is here (because I have absolutely no doubt that this person will be back), I'm sure they'll go upstairs this time and take whatever they can find. I'm sure my computer monitor will be next because it's identical to the one they took from my parents. I was also lucky in that I backed up my entire hard drive only yesterday (bought an external one on sale from Best Buy and backed everything up) and I've now sent that off for safekeeping, too, so multiple copies of my novel exist in various places. I can live without a lot of things, but it would kill me to lose all of the work on that novel permanently. We took our money and other valuables down to my father's church.

Milwaukee's police force is horrible. It took them well over an hour and a half just to get here, both of these times, and when we ask what else we can do to prevent this from happening, they don't have any suggestions. And they're so understaffed that they don't patrol the area, looking for suspicious activity. They don't even recommend getting an alarm system because they know they're not able to respond to it in a timely fashion.

The one thing I've been able to glean about this person is that they're physically small (maybe even a kid), they're desperate for money (maybe even druggies needing their "fix"), they're obsessed with our house (probably because they got that $1,000 last year and now think we're THE place to hit), and they know they're not going to get caught so they just keep coming back, getting bolder, and taking whatever they want. And if they can't get it, they get angry and are now obviously moving on to destroying things. Personally, I think they're pissed that we blocked their "perfect" entry route by putting in the glass block windows. And angry, desperate, obsessed, and determined is a bad combination...as far as I'm concerned, it leads to one terrifying place: murder, if necessary, and massive destruction (maybe even arson) if they can't get what they want. Human beings are capable of a lot of horrible things, and in this city, where people get killed at gas stations just for their shoes, clearly no one is safe from it anymore. I would put nothing past this person anymore, not if they came back twice in a week and a half. And that makes me fear not only for my own life, but for my parent's lives.

I don't know what to do. I don't want to live in a world this ****ed up anymore. Life isn't supposed to be like this. Everything about Earth (and humanity) is falling apart at the seams, even the weather. I have no idea why God is letting this happen, without exacting justice from this creep. I'm not suicidal, but I'm also having a hard time seeing the good in anything anymore, the point to it. And to think that I'm only 28 and am supposed to have a nice, long life ahead of me. What's the point of it when there's no world worth living in anymore? Every day it's getting worse, and nothing's happening to change it. I'm afraid it's going to take something catastropic for people to realize this way of life isn't working and actually do something to change it, to fix everything that's gone wrong.

There is so much wrong with everything nowadays. People have lost the ability to be human. All we want to do is earn a decent living for ourselves by working hard. How do we escape this insanity and evil? I don't know. I feel completely helpless. I feel defeated. I feel lost. I feel exhausted. I feel devastated. I'm scared. I have a lot of vacation days left this summer that I need to take off, and I'm afraid to take any of them and be at home alone because I don't know how to defend myself if worst came to worst.

The last time this happened, it hit me hard. It took until the middle of last week before I started recovering from it. This time, though...I just don't know how I'm going to manage even that. It hasn't even sunk in yet. Even last time I was beginning to question my sanity and my ability to handle bad things that happened...and now this happens. Again. And I'm becoming even more paranoid than before.

What is the purpose my being alive? I wouldn't exist unless there was a reason, right? What am I supposed to do? Am I doing something wrong and being punished? Is the Universe/God trying to tell me something? Do I need to change something? Am I supposed to be doing something else and this is a sign to be doing it? But what? We're working on moving as fast as we can, but there's a lot of work here that needs to be done yet before we can do that.

Is there any place in the world that hasn't been touched by the United States' pure selfishness, corruptness, and obsession with monetary and physical goods? Where a human life is maybe still valued, where other people's possessions aren't yours for the taking? Because I really, really want to move there, even if it means becoming a hermit for the rest of my life. How about Canada? How good/bad are things there? Or England? Seriously. Right now I'll consider anything.

I guess I'd better start focusing solely on that novel and forget everything else until it's done. I need to have it in workable condition and off to someone I can trust soon so that, in the event that I don't live long enough to finish what started all those years ago, maybe someone else can at least make sure that whatever is supposed to happen with it can happen. Because right now, that's the only "legacy" I'm afraid I may ever be able to leave.

And please, dear friends, if you believe in a higher being, please say a prayer for my family and our safety. I'm trying desperately not to lose faith, but I tell you, senseless things like this make it easy to see how people can question the existence of God.

So, I had a nice long post nearly typed up yesterday afternoon dealing with overarching themes/premises in fiction that I'm a sucker for and an analysis of my favorite shows/games/books/movies/etc. to see how they measured up on that "theme scale." Then, shortly before I could finish it, I got a call from my mom, who'd just arrived home from work.

Our house was broken into sometime yesterday while we were all at work.

Needless to say, I dropped everything and went home...and the situation we found was rather bizarre, to put it lightly.

The thief broke in through a basement window along a sheltered (i.e. lots of trees along it so no one else could see him/her/them) side of the house. They broke through the bar over the window, and the glass itself went flying, oh, a good 15, 20 feet away from the window itself. They stepped down onto a refrigerator and went upstairs into my parents' bedroom. They rifled through some stuff on my mom's dresser, then went to my dad's dresser. They took all the change he had sitting out (which was a lot), all the rolls of pennies he had lying out, and about $1,000 worth of cash he had lying toward the top of his top drawer (money I had paid them for rent in the house and for the trip to Nashville, along with grocery money and other money my grandmother had given my dad not long ago). We're not sure if they took one of our credit cards, too, because they messed up the top drawer so much -- we thought they had taken two (both of which we immediately canceled, not that there was anything charged on them), but we found the MasterCard, so we're not sure yet if the Visa will turn up. They must have then left through the same window they crawled in through.

Which all sounds normal, right? Well, the window itself that they broke in through is tiny -- seriously. Not even 2 feet tall and 3 feet wide. There's a pit in front of the window that makes it very hard to maneuver into the window itself -- everyone who looked at it couldn't believe ANYONE had gotten in through there unless they were an acrobat or contortionist. The policeman found a footprint on top of the refrigerator that they said looked pretty small (I didn't see it before my parents cleaned up the basement, so I can't corroborate, but I'll trust a policeman when it comes to judgment on those kinds of things), leading them to think it was a small kid. Other than that, we found no trace evidence -- no blood, no fingerprints, no dirt/footprints, nada. We had a (loud) radio on in the living room (which we leave on all the time to deter thefts, and yes, you can hear it from anywhere inside the house), too, but that obviously didn't stop them.

But here's the kicker. They rifled through the bottom drawer in my dad's dresser, but missed all our trip money (several hundred dollars' worth...I'd say at least $500). They also missed all my mom's cash from my grandmother (another several hundred dollars' worth) which wouldn't have been hard to find on her dresser. They didn't touch any of our electronic stuff; no one touched our VCRs, TV, CD player, CDs, DVD player, nothing. My dad had at least $300 worth of scanners sitting right below the dresser that weren't touched. And, heck, whoever it was never even went upstairs to my room, where I had $140 worth of cash sitting out on a shelf right by the door, somewhere you'd have to be blind to miss. They didn't touch my Game Boy, Playstation, video games, DVDs, or CDs. They didn't even touch my digital camera, which was sitting right by the door -- there's no way they could have gone upstairs and missed any of that. And other than the basement window, they didn't damage anything.

It had to be a kid who did it (Joy's guessing it was something along the lines of a kid daring another kid to do it), but the sheer distance the glass flew in the basement was just...weird. No kid could have had the strength to make it go halfway across the basement, and even if he had a baseball bat, there's no swinging room in that pit by the window to get any oomph behind it! The fact that they missed so much easy-to-find stuff, too, was bizarre. Were they afraid, because the radio was on, that someone was home somewhere in the house, so when they found a good chunk of money, they took that and bolted? Was it a kid who was being told by a teen/adult what to do who didn't know any better? Anyone who got into the basement HAD to have heard the radio. No other windows were touched (even the normal-sized window directly above the window they broke in through, which would have been far easier to get into and out of), and both the front door and the main door we use were still dead-bolted.

We were extremely lucky that no one was hurt and there was no major damage inside the house, but the pieces of it just don't add up or make sense. Why THAT window, not just smash through an easier one that was just as "sheltered" as the basement one? Why get that far into the house (touching nothing in the living room or kitchen, which they had to go through to get to the bedroom), only to leave so much easy-to-take stuff behind, including some not-difficult-to-find money? Why not even go upstairs to see what was easy to take from my room? I'm definitely not complaining that they didn't touch my stuff, but...either the person was merely scoping the place out for a future visit (which the policemen say is unlikely), they only needed a couple hundred dollars in cash and left when they found what they were looking for (how very nice and considerate of them ), they were interrupted or afraid someone was home and wanted to get out ASAP, or they were stupid and/or just following someone else's directions about what to do. If they knew we weren't home, why not take more? If they thought someone was home, why go upstairs in the first place?

I don't get it. It's just weird. And in one sense, it really is hilarious how much stuff they missed. In another, it's creepy and disturbing and worrying and I'm lucky I got ANY sleep last night after all the late-night excitement.

On the bright side, we now have police photos of our house in the event that someone ever REALLY breaks in and steals our stuff so we have proof we owned it. We also were reassured by the policemen that we were doing everything right to burglar-proof our house; it's not like we were broadcasting to everyone an invitation to come and break into our house. We'll probably get glass blocking put in place of the basement windows, which will be a heck of a lot harder to bust through.

And all this coming on a day that a number of us were discussing, at work, how this was the Week From Hell because it's the end of the semester, when things are about as crazy as they can get, and we were apologizing and forgiving each other in advance for any bitchiness or snippiness we happen to display during the rest of the week (amongst other bizarre occurrences that I've heard happened yesterday from others at work, like a tree falling through a person's deck and someone's cat deciding to throw up all over the place). Hopefully it was just a 'yesterday' thing and the rest of the week will be fine. Hopefully.

If anyone can explain any of this to me, I'm all ears. But in the meantime, I have a ton of work to do (course evaluations have started flying in fast and furiously), so I'm off to do that and ponder exactly what goes through people's minds when they decide to break into a house.