The View From the Zen Garden

My peaceful afternoon was interrupted by lots of noise and hu-bub outside the apartment. It sounded like a helicopter landing which is normal since we live near the hospital, but it kept hovering and hovering and not landing. I, having nothing else to do, went out on the deck only to find three to four helicopters circling the apartment complex. Well, at least the apartment complex was in their flying pattern. At least one was a news helicopter, and two might have been police helicopters. I didn't know if they were looking for someone, if there was a car chase going on (I've seen them before on Speed TV or whatever that channel is that shows the most dangerous car chases ever), or what was going on. As I wasn't sure if I should leave my residence, I watched to see what all of the other neighbors were doing.

They were all living life as normal. This made me worry less about a fugitive being on the loose. We then went to the weather museum. All 15 minutes of our walk through there was riveting. There is a reason it's free on Thursdays. That's all I'm saying. Scratch that one off of the places to take people when they come to visit.

So on our way home, we run into all of the hu-bub. It's about 20 police men, three fire trucks, a bunch of white vans saying something like "medical examiner" or "CSI" or something like that, and a bunch of men with a body bag.

Sad. Stuff like this sucks. It made me start thinking about crime and how I've never had to worry about it before. I've always lived places where the crime rates were pretty low. (In fact, my aunt called me the other day just to tell me that Portland has it's lowest crime rate since the 1970s. Congratulations.) We can't prevent crime from happening, but when there are so many people that live in a city, more accidents happen, more crime happens, more people have road rage, more people get killed. That's just the way it works. Sad, but true.

So when you come visit, I'll take you to the Zen garden. It's good times.