Witnessing

It's been very cool this weekend.  A nice change, but sort of a shock to the system as well!

Saturday, we went to my company open house and got a free lunch.  I took Dave around to see the new buildings.  We had hoped there would be an ambulance on display, where someone might explain what stuff was for family members, and even staff who were interested.

We had hoped there would be a tour of the facility...but nope.  It was still good to go, though.

Then, Dave did the front yard mowing, and I did some laundry.  

I had a lot of pain yesterday, though (possibly made worse by the drastic weather change), so mostly, I sat on the couch, watching the Cubs, in the afternoon.

Feeling better this morning, and have plans to get the back yard mowed, and Dave has some stuff he's been putting off that he wants to get done as well.

There's also the smell of another dead animal in the back yard, that we need to get sorted out.  Yuck. We REALLY hope it's not our beloved Silver, who we have not seen for weeks.

We attributed her disappearance to the mean cat who the noisy new neighbors leave outside....but..... they also have two big dogs that they let roam. Anything could have happened to our Silver.

Someone also took two of my little solar path lights and stomped on them and left them on the ground.  I think I know who!

Anyway, this afternoon, we are meeting our friends from Switzerland for lunch.  

It is supposed to be a bit warmer today, but still not even up to 70, and then it's supposed to rain much of the week.  We really need this stuff to get done today.

I was able to work some overtime last week, and will do so again this week.  

We also got great news that the salary review process is finally complete, and our department will be the first to see adjustments.  Some people will get substantial raises!  I am trying not to get my hopes up too high, but I do suspect that my raise will be more than 3%, given what the bosses said about the review process in the meeting last week.

I will bid you all a good week here, because I am having some issues with Blogger this morning.  

At the end of this post, there is something that happened on Friday that was very frightening.  I can't get Blogger to let me type anything below the pasted content that I brought over from my face book page, though, so I will say it here.

After I got home, it hit me that I was very, very fortunate.  Not only did I not witness a murder, or a horrific beating, or anything other than screaming, but I also got home safely, without being chased down, and assaulted, or worse, for them to get my phone.

Once that all hit me, I had a bit of a melt down, and was really tired the rest of the day. 

This kind of an event has been unheard of in our peaceful, quiet, diverse neighborhood.  Hate and racism is becoming more and more openly rampant in the wake of Tronald Dump's occupation of the White House.  It's terrifying. 

SO... here is the story:

Dave took Friday off, and he was home, but busy, when I went out for my morning break walk.

I was having some pain, but thought a walk would do me good.  

Below is a cross post from my face book page:

I was walking down Miller toward 10th,  there was a brown person in the block ahead of me, equal to about 2 blocks away, walking my way.  I couldn't tell how brown he was, Mexican, or African...but he was definitely brown skinned.

A northbound red pick up truck comes to the southbound side of the esplanade, still facing north, and pulls up to brown person. 

Someone is yelling.

I was already crossing to the esplanade, to go to the other side of the street, because I was having pain, and was cutting my walk short.

Then, a silver SUV comes from the northbound lane, turning into the southbound lane (pointing the right way-southbound) and stops, nose to nose with the pickup.

I think another brown person got out of the SUV... but I didn't really look at him until I was turning to get my ass out of there.... When he got out of the SUV, I was distracted at that point, because I was scared, and trying to find cover.  

I mean, there could have been guns involved, and the yelling was getting louder.

Old shirtless white guy, and a younger white guy, exit red pick up and continue yelling at brown guy (who had been walking).

I watched from cover, and thought I was getting cell phone video, but it didn't work.

No violence - just screaming and swearing.  Old white guy was gesturing wildly.

Old white guy appeared to spot me, and screamed “get the fuck out of here!”

Could have been saying that to brown guy, though.  I was pretty sure they had not noticed me, but then I started to doubt that.

Thinking I'd possibly been spotted, but not 100% sure, I lowered my phone and came home, keeping out of sight as best I could, by walking close to houses (keeping trees and shrubs between me and them), until I turned the corner.

This incident was in the block between 13th and 14th streets.

The truck and SUV had to go southbound to get out of that block, IF they cared about going the right direction, but no one came around looking for me, and I think  the walking brown guy either went to someone's door, or even to his own home, because I kept checking behind me, and didn't see that he was continuing north, as I headed back east on my street.

Silver SUV driver may have been there to de-escalate.  He may have given the walking guy a ride....I missed what happened after I thought old white guy screamed at me.....and, I was really more focused on the white guys, and what they might do to the man who was walking.