Home safe, but a little freaked out
Flight home was largely uneventful. Kam picked me up at the airport, and we went to a new Ethiopian place in San José for dinner. Was pretty good; more on that in another entry.
Then Kam took me home. We turned onto my street and saw that there were police cars and yellow tape all over the middle of the block.
As we got closer, we saw that there were police going into and out of the house next door to my (small) condo complex--the house whose (enormous) back yard is on the other side of my yard's fence. My driveway wasn't blocked off. Kam parked on the street a little ways down, and I asked a police officer (a) if it was okay to go to my house, and (b) what had happened. He said it was fine for us to go to my house, but that he wasn't allowed to talk about what had happened. But that there was a press release on the Mountain View police website.
So we checked the website, specifically the Public Safety press releases section, and learned that at 5:00 a.m. on Saturday, the police received reports of gunshots from this area. They investigated, and discovered a man and a woman dead in the house next door.
I got kinda stressed. I didn't know the people who lived in that house at all, but I'm sad about them, and it's awfully close to home, both literally and metaphorically.
There's a phone number on the press release, for the public information officer; so I called her and left voicemail. She called me back an hour later (on a Saturday night; I was impressed) and left voicemail in which she said that everything was pointing to this not being some random incident (that is, it's not like someone is breaking into random houses and killing people), and added that there was no sign of forced entry. (She said she couldn't provide more info than that about the situation.) She also gave the same advice that she always gives everyone, to keep doors locked and windows closed and blocked. I found the call pretty reassuring; I'm a lot less tense about this than I was when I first found out what had happened. (I'm writing this around 12:30 Sunday morning, but setting it to post much later in the morning, so as not to make anyone fret if you happen to check my journal tonight.)
It was also reassuring to have Kam here. I thought about going and spending the night at her place, but I've been away from home too much lately, and will shortly be going away again, so really wanted to be home. She offered to stay over, but I think I would fret too much about that. My own room is such a total mess that I can't really imagine anyone sneaking into it during the night (and I'll put a chair or something behind the door anyway, just to reassure my subconscious so I can sleep), but the guest room is more or less clean and is down the hall, and I think I would be irrationally tense over the safety of anyone sleeping in that room tonight.
We decided that perhaps watching the (likely to be blood-soaked) last couple episodes of the BSG half-season would not be a good choice tonight; likewise finally watching the first episodes of Monk, which we'd been thinking about starting to watch. We would've started catching up on Dr. Who, but I hadn't downloaded the missing episode yet. The Indiana Jones movie also seemed like a probably bad choice. We thought about going to see Wall-E, but I think I'll enjoy that more when I'm in a lighter mood. We could've played with the Spore Creature Creator (which we've been really enjoying) if we'd thought of it, but instead we just hung out for a while. And I played Kam the song "Snuggle Puppy" from Philadelphia Chickens, which Mary Anne played for me a few weeks ago and which I find totally charming and delightfully cheery. I don't even mind that it's stuck in my head.
Anyway. The other reason for posting this note is to mention that I've been largely away from my personal email for the past several days--been busy--and I know that I owe several of you urgent responses. I'm gonna try to get through a bunch of stuff, especially magazine stuff, today/Sunday. I'm sorry for the delay.
