Yesterday was crazy weather day here. It started out sunny. Then these clouds moved in and we had a thunderstorm with big booms and flashes of lightening. Watching out our office window, we saw lightening strike down by the river front. Turns out it hit a playground and left a four inch deep hole in the asphalt. (Don’t worry, all the kiddies were inside at their desks.) The thunderstorm only lasted ten minutes or so and then the clouds blew through and it started to clear. Right when I thought everything was normal, down comes this torrential rain that turns into hail. Absolutely crazy I tell you.
And it’s not just the weather that’s gone nuts. There have been two shootings downtown. Now, you have to realize that Portland’s downtown blocks are a mere ten by ten grid. On Monday, at 11:30am, a man and a woman were walking by the Pioneer Square, pretty much dead center of downtown, and a man approached them asking them for drugs. The couple refused, and the man pulled a gun and shot the man point blank five or six times in front of dozens of witnesses. He then hoped into a car and took off. The man died later that day. Then, yesterday, three men walked into the Wells Fargo over on 4th at 2pm, shot a few rounds into the air, and demanded money. One or two fled into a nearby apartment building where they took hostages and were surrounded by police. I guess it all ended peacefully. In a big city, this may seem like nothing but this is not a big city. Crazy I tell you.
How do I know all this, you ask me? It’s not because I read the newspaper, listen to the news or radio stations. Oh no, I have discovered a new (and very addictive) pastime. Police scanners. Yes, that’s right. Thanks to the joy of the Internet, you can now listen to the Portland Police scanners over streaming video. They even provide a handy-dandy reference sheet of codes and lingo so you can understand what’s being said. It is so very very neat.
Have decided to quit my job and become a police dispatcher as soon as I figure out where to apply.