Many things are unexplained, such as why he came to this neighborhood at all, but it's more than a little freaky that he abandoned his car less than a minute's walk away, then walked farther from our house to attempt to carjack someone else's car in the HP parking lot. He could just as easily have come to our block.
Lorne Way in Sunnyvalewhere he was caught is now famous as the short street where he hid out, and ultimately was shot, but we know it as the site of a birthday party Julian attended in 2008 -- in fact on the same block section. Julian's friend Alex (and his father, my friend George who shares my interest in WWII-era planes and invited us to the tour of the tank museum we took last summer) were renting there and have since moved, thank heavens. They've had been in the center of the action -- and terror.
Actually, best as I can tell, this house is 5 doors down from the one where he was shot. It'd take barely a few minutes to walk there from here -- and even less time to walk to our house from where the gunman abandoned his car.
But it's over, and we can be grateful our schools rehearsed "code blues" and shocked that it ever had to be executed.
Bigger problems tonight though....we discovered that newly-responsible Gabriel is way, way, WAY behind on his week's worth of homework, and a 2-week-long project due tomorrow. We've just been far too distracted with all the issues Julian has been giving us -- it's exhausting keeping after him for absolutely everything.
And I'm still in something between shock and panic about starting a new job. Starting a new job is always a big deal, but maybe that's harder as we get older and more settled into our comfort zones. Then again, I've always had a love-hate relationship with comfort zones. I think I do my best inbetween them, striving to find them.
It's been 4 days and already I've learned so much and realized how much more there is to learn. I keep looking for something "wrong" with this situation, but the more I look at it, even though it looks so different than what I identify with, the less I can find anything wrong with it. Am I kidding myself? I think I'm going to do very well here. The only true anxiety I can find is not having much opportunity to delve into the detailed protocol analysis I used to do and loved (give me a testset and a protocol analyzer and I'm home!) -- this is much less academic, and closer to "just get it done and don't worry about the ins and outs of why." I'm the closest to "IT" as I've ever been in my career as a network engineer.
Now, can I balance an incredibly badly-behaved son and an incredibly putzy or poor-planning son and work??? Can we handle this while I work? SO frustrating finding out how much homework Gabriel has that he's had all week to do!!
This is one Friday I am SOOOO ready for!
10/6/11
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