you know how people say "it's like living in a war zone?"

The night before last I called 911 to report two sets of gunshots, three each time. The dispatcher said they'd got a lot of calls, and they thought the shots came from California and Laurel (a few blocks uphill, and incidentally very close to where Emma and Jason are moving next week). Last night it was only one shot, and I actually thought well, it's only one shot this time, at least.

I haven't felt personally unsafe. The targets of gang violence are mostly young men (the women who have been hurt or killed in the last year have been victims of domestic abuse). Does this sound like I'm trivializing either of these problems? I'm not. The reason I call 911 for every weird noise is that it enrages me that there are people out there hunting down the young men, and I hope to maybe be able to prevent one of those attacks -- either the gang ones or the domestic ones, they're both horrible. But I have felt free to walk my dog at night, to go to the store at night, that kind of thing.

Now I wonder if I haven't been too oblivious to the danger of stray shots. Because there's shooting so often now.

On another front: five more days of extra dogs. It hasn't been all that successful. I don't mean the neighbor complaining, or the chewed things, though it's a really big loss not to have some decent shoes. I mean that I had hoped to work out a way to help the dogs learn better behavior, but I can't do it alone. They really need daily trips to the dog park, and every time I try to take them to the car I get hurt. Not because the dogs do anything to me, but because I can't get them down the stairs without getting knocked over. They need a separate handler for each dog. And I am only one person.

tagged again

I was tagged by personhead ocotillo_dawn  and that's the only reason I'm doing this.  It's that book sentence game again, this time with somewhat different instructions.

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the next 4-7 sentences on your LJ along with these instructions.
5. Don't you dare dig for that "cool" or "intellectual" book in your closet! I know you were thinking about it! Just pick up whatever is closest (unless it's too troublesome to reach and is really heavy. Then go back to step 1).
6. Tag five people.

It's a tossup between the phone book (boring) and <i>The Vegetable Bible</i> which I believe actually belongs to Emma's friend Kelley but she left it behind when she moved back to the City.   This book is nothing but sidebars strewn decoratively around the page in vague reference to brilliantly lit and probably heavily oiled gorgeous vegetables largely undergoing some kind of processing.

 Pull off the skin from top to bottom with a kitchen knife.  Cut the bell peppers in half lengthwise, taking care not to squash the soft flesh.  Remove the stalk, including the base, from the bell pepper halves, and cut out and discard the core and seeds, leaving just the flesh.  The prepared bell pepper halves may now be halved again, quartered, or cut into strips or cubes of any desired size, according to the recipe.

Signs of freshness in a bell pepper are smooth, firm skin and a crisp, green stalk.  At one time bell peppers were often broken off the plant, but they are now usually cut in order to avoid damaging them.

It's not a game if you don't tag people, so here are the personheads I am tagging (chosen by the expedience of their having posted today and by me seeing their names right now: there is no real criterion):
birdsedge 
thomasyan 
deborahjross 
fivemack 
pnkrokhockeymom 

That last one?  You have a really hard personhead name to spell correctly, pnkrokhockeymom .