Busted!

One peaceful June evening our meth tweaker neighbor two doors down kinda went off the rails. It started with him pacing back and forth in his yard screaming nonsense at... no one. Then it escalated to dumping some sort of accelerant on the neighbor's work truck and setting the truck on fire. Wish I had taken more pics of the burning truck, but there's just this pic of the fire right after he started it. When it really got going I was on the phone with 911 and didn't take a pic:

Took a couple 911 calls to get CRPD interested, but they finally showed up (20 minutes later) and as soon as they did, Dan the Meth Guy barricaded himself in his house and shut off all the lights. So the cops set up shop across several yards and waited:

You can see a couple cops with AR-15s hiding behind our tree:

And some in riot gear behind his house:

Then an MRAP showed up and they started ordering Dan out of the house over the loudspeaker. He was screaming nonsense back at them, something about how cops are hunting down and murdering meth users. It probably made sense to him. I mostly got video, but blogger is being a jerk and won't let me post it, so I have just a handful of pics instead:

After busting out his windows and throwing in some flash bang grenades, they went in and hauled him out. They asked me to go over and identify him since I was the one who called. Dude looked awful, like he'd been awake for a week. Then they opened his garage and discovered he had barrels full of chemicals that are used to make meth, but he hadn't started cooking yet. Good timing! He had racked up a long list of local and federal charges by the end of it. He has since been sentenced on the federal charges and won't be out again for a long, long time.

Hey, You're Not Irish, Pt 2

This year again we went to John and Roxi's St. Patrick's Day party, though it'll be the last time. It was great to hang out with the people we've gotten to know so well over the past 9.5 years. The whole Herb clan was there as well and it was fun to talk and laugh with them for a bit. We'll miss all of our cool neighbors!

Hey, You're Not Irish

But they let us in, anyway. Wearin' o' the green gets ya in the door, which is good because John and Roxi's St. Patrick's Day party was a blast. They had corned beef and cabbage, potatoes, carrots, shepherd's pie, Mulligan stew (which isn't really Irish at all, but still good), and some other dish with pulled pork and cabbage and something that was like mustard all cooked in a crust that was really good. They passed around shots of Bailey's after the meal and we all cheered. It was cool to see other people that we knew there and to sit with the Herbs. I've done senior pictures for all four of their kids now and I feel like it was some big accomplishment on my part. I have this weird sense of pride when I see their kids all growing up and starting their adult lives. Geez, I'm old.

On the 16th, we lined up for our free ice cream at the DQ near our house. DQ was celebrating their 75th anniversary by giving away free ice cream cones all day and there's no way we're passing that up!

Cynthia dug out her old keyboard and Rose has been studying the music books that came with it and learning to play songs. It was really painful to listen to at first, but she practices every day and now she's got it figured out.

Ah, finally it's warm enough to sit on the front porch for supper. I missed grilling and sitting on the front porch. Winter sucks!