Weddingbee boards

Ok funny story about the whole alarm thing. I was working at a store that had an alarm. I was the manager of the store and would always have to turn the alarm off. You have about 45 seconds to walk to the back room to turn it off before it goes off. I would be at the store at like 5 in the morning sometimes. So half asleep... punching in codes. Not the best, so needless to say I have set the alarms off many times. One particular morning while the alarm is going off. I am trying to punch in the cancel button, (I am at different store subbing for a friend manager) I am freaking out. It costs a lot of money to accidently trip the alarm. So I am punching in all these numbers, and I can't remember for the life of me the cancel code. The phone starts ringing it's the police. Asking for the safe word, I can barely think because the alarms are going. So I am now a basket case... screaming in the phone. "Oh god just turn them off I can't think." And they won't because they need the safe word. So I am trying to think and it suddenly hits me. "MANGO! MANGO! Oh for the love of god. Turn the fucking alarm off. MANGO!" They turn the alarm off and then ask me a bunch of questions to make sure I am in not any danger.

So the alarms really do work and they are very responsive.

Yeah, we live in one of those in-between neighborhoods too. It's frustrating, especially on the rare occasions when something really bad happens---we've had one mugging nearby, which was really scary, and one burglary of down the street (which was funny/scary---he's this sweet old man who takes the collection at his church, and these kids from the church for some reason decided they'd break into his house and get the money after church---another neighbor across the street literally sat and watched them loudly try to break into the front door with crow bars in the middle of the afternoon as he described them each to the police....the cops got there and nabbed them all, but really, how stupid can you be?!?) It is true that bad things happen, though, especially in transitional neighborhoods and especially in difficult economic times. We have a dog, an alarm, and really awesome neighbors, and fortunately we haven't been personally affected by crime.

The weirdest thing was the second month we lived here, though, when I woke up to all this noise, and went to look out our front window---there were four motorcycle cops all parked on the sidewalk in front of our house! I remember calling FI over and having a meltdown about how we must have moved into a drug zone or something (we literally moved six blocks from our old apartment, so it's not like we didn't know the neighborhood---but I was still panicking!)

Then we watched for a while, and realized it was a crosswalk sting---this guy was walking back and forth in the crosswalk on the street we live off of with a coffee cup in hand, and every time a car didn't stop for him, one of the cops would rev up his bike and whip around the corner to ticket them. I guess our house was the closest they could be without being visible to the drivers...it was pretty funny once we realized what was going on, but definitely nerve-wracking!