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2004-04-13 - 8:46 p.m. The bad news Before I go off into the story of what an awesome lucky day I had on Friday, let me mention some people who had really extremely bad luck that day. Weird Al Yankovic's parents were found dead at their home, from accidental carbon monoxide poisoning. Even though there's no way to make any kind of joke out of that, when you first read that with his name, don't you just think it's got to be some really sick, late April Fool's joke? That's what I thought, and hoped, when I saw it. But it's not any kind of joke. It's true. So sad. They started a fire in their wood stove, and the flue was closed, and within hours, they were gone. Al put a very touching statement up on his web site, and asked everyone to please get a carbon monoxide detector. We got one as soon as we moved into our house. My husband also made a point of telling me that I should never have the car engine running in the garage even for a second with the garage door closed. Now, you'd think that's a "Captain Obvious" kind of tip, but you never know what kind of strange situation you might find yourself in where you start the car then have to run back in the house for something, or whatever... at any rate, any time now that I'm leaving and happen to reach for the ignition before the garage door opener, even though it was my plan to hit that .7 seconds later, I stop and open the garage door first. Easy enough to do, and why not take that one extra paranoid step? I don't really know what to say here to complete that thought. Rest in peace just sounds so boring and they seemed like such fun people. Bon voyage, I guess. My other story is local. On my way home from work Friday, I stopped at a convenience store less than a mile from my house. As I was pulling into the parking lot, a police car passed me with its siren on and pulled into the next cross street. I didn't think too much of it yet. Then before I even got into the store, two more cars pulled in and blocked off that street. Okay, that's unusual. It's a relatively quiet neighborhood, and definitely not a high crime area. While I was in the store, the phone rang just as I got up to the counter. The clerk answered and told someone where the store was, then turned and looked out the front window to describe what he could see - which at that point was a lot of police cars, and the police tying yellow tape between telephone poles to close off the area. When he hung up the phone, he looked at me with a surprised look, and said, "Guess who that was?" It was the local TV news - they heard something on the police radio, found a local business to call, and asked what he could see. He said he didn't think to ask them what had happened. By the time I got out to the parking lot a few minutes later, several people had gathered. This was right across the street from all the activity. One guy said to me, "I think they found a body over there." I'm like, yeah, right. But I knew I wanted to get home before the road clogged up completely. During the very short drive home, an ambulance passed me, going full out. Nothing on the early evening news, but by that night I found something from a newspaper's website. There was indeed a body found. In fact, two people were found lying in the driveway. One was already dead, and the other died soon after at the hospital. The police wouldn't release any other details, as family hadn't yet been notified, but they did say no one in the area was in any danger, no suspects were being sought, and they had no reason at the moment to think anyone else was involved. There was no comment to the question of whether the two people were related, or if it was a murder-suicide. But, two people killed in a driveway with no one else involved? That's a murder-suicide or a pretty freak accident - and that was a lot of police cars for a freak accident. But I know they can't release information prematurely. Well, the next day - front page. Turns out, it was a man and a woman, who had been divorced since 1997. The woman had just moved into the house where all this happened in February, indeed had just moved into town from a couple of towns over. She moved in with her new husband - she and the man who had lived in the house for 30 years had just gotten married. The only other public details are that her ex came to her house, and as the two of them stood in her driveway, he shot her once in the head, then shot himself. Now, I don't know these people, certainly don't know what went on in their minds, and am trying not to judge. But it makes me really angry. All I can think is, he got the order reversed. He shot the wrong person first. Anyone out there who is thinking of shooting someone, then yourself - please take this bit of advice. Swap the order there. Shoot yourself first. Make sure you do it right. Follow through. Take yourself out. Think of it as practice. See what it's like to be dead and make sure you really want to do this. Once that's done, if you decide you still really want the other person dead... You know what? Still don't. Idiot. my mood - |
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