But today was also marred by a horrendous incident in our neighborhood that isn't entirely over. We were awakened this morning with numerous sirens and helicopters, and discovered after we'd dropped kids off at school and gotten to work that a shooting had occurred a few miles away, then an other non-fatal shooting and failed carjacking very closeby. I spent the whole day tracking Live News Coverage of the incident.
Our schools were on "lockdown," which the kids know as "Code Blue," which meant, no one outdoors, only groups going outside the classrooms (where the bathrooms are), kids released only to adults (no walking home from school). Many parents pulled their kids out of school, and I was tempted, but the truth is : our house is much closer to the action than the school is, so the kids were safer at school. Police and SWAT teams were doing house-to-house searches for the gunman -- still at large as I type -- and the odds were very low he'd make it all the way to the school.
Then after work when I went to pick up the kids, I heard on the radio just as I was parking that Steve Jobs died today. Oh. My. God. That's incredible. Not surprising, he'd been ill for some time, but Oh. My. God. Cancer is awful to take away such a bright light, such a world-changer. It's awful to take anyone of course, but it's just so hard to believe of someone who was such a force.
I thought hard about that driving home, with my children squabbling in the backseat, and counting the helicopters still flying over my neighborhood on my daughter's 5th birthday. The most remarkable thing about today should have been my 3rd day at a new job, not this -- all this.
10/5/11
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