Today is Youth Pride Day, and working for an organization that sponsors this annual event means I’ll be working all day at our table. It’s for a good cause, and I’m always happy to see the young gay boys and girls gather in a place where they are accepted, so I’m definitely not complaining.

To get a little exercise, I decided to walk to work this morning. Being that I live on a not-so-great side of the city and my office is smack in the middle of downtown, the three mile trek is literally an interesting transition from a dirty, somewhat rundown neighborhood to a cleaner, more quaint and colorful area. As proof, about a third of the way into my walk (on 14th St & Florida Ave NW, which is right about at the line where the city starts to get “better.”), I notice a guy passed out and/or sleeping, literally half of his body lying on the curb and the other half in the street. As I got closer, I noticed one of his sneakers appeared to be missing…and - this part especially amused me - he had his thumb in his mouth. I hope he was sleeping peacefully.

Once I got closer to my office (around 17th St & Rhode Island Ave NW), I noticed two older men walking several hundred feet ahead of me and stopping every few feet to pick up trash some random idiots tossed onto the sidewalk, even when there is a garbage receptacle literally at each end of a block. Those two obviously have an appreciation for this city a lot of people don’t possess, and that made me smile.

I’m a fragrance freak… and I wear men’s cologne, which probably isn’t shocking.

I got a new fragrance by Prada called Amber Pour Homme.

Amber for Men.

I find that particularly funny. *grin*

I’ve occasionally wondered if dialing 911 on a cell phone would ensure a quick and proper connection to the authorities in the case of an emergency.

Well, around 4am this morning, I was able to actually find out.

I was awakened by some screaming outside. At first it was short and intermittent, and it took probably two or three screams to pull me from the depths of sleep. Once the sound fully roused me, I realized the screams seemed to be coming from right outside the house. I jumped up and looked outside and sure enough, there was a guy punching on a girl lying in the street and dragging her around by a backpack she was wearing. I immediately reached for my cell and dialed 911, but instantly worried the call wouldn’t be routed quickly enough. Thankfully that wasn’t the case. A dispatcher picked up in a few seconds and I immediately rambled off my address and let them know what I was witnessing. The dispatcher asked me if I could describe the guy, but all I could see was that he had short dark hair and that he was possibly Hispanic. Then, all of a sudden, the girl was pounding on our front door, continuing to scream for help. I relayed this to the dispatcher, and she replied that someone was already on the way. Obviously, the pounding on the door woke Vedder, who started barking insanely. We all came out of our respective bedrooms, and I noticed Sarah was on her cell phone, too, also calling the police. Dawn opened the door a bit, trying to push Vedder from lunging outside and getting the girl to come inside…but, I think Vedder’s crazy barking scared her, because she wouldn’t come in.

Then, the police were there… all in the matter of a minute, it seemed, which was good. But the guy beating on the girl was long gone, quite possibly because the girl’s banging on the door got Vedder ready to attack. He’s a sweet dog, but he goes into protection mode very quickly.

Needless to say, we all stayed up and peeked through the windows to watch the police take the girl’s statement. I say ‘girl’ because she really didn’t look any older than her mid-twenties. Not to be insensitive, but my speculation is the girl was either tripped out on some drugs or really very drunk, because she kept standing up and then a minute or two later she’d be sitting in the street as the cops talked to her. Dawn and I also noticed the cops looked slightly annoyed while talking to her…but maybe those are their permanent expressions in this neighborhood.

I know no area is completely removed from occurrences such as these, but it’s stuff like this that makes me want to move.