As I write this it’s almost 7:00 pm. It’s also 95°F outside, though weather.com says it feels like it’s 99°F. Earlier today my friend Dave & I looked up the weather and were informed that, at the time (3-ish in the afternoon) it felt like a mere 106%deg;.

Just for fun, here’s the 10-day forecast for San Antonio, Texas compared next to Portland, Oregon:

So close… yet…

UPDATE: It’s 6:32 am (June 11th) and it’s 77° outside.

My friend Darius has been telling me about this bagel place in town that he thought was pretty good. I decided this morning was the morning to give it a try. A twenty minute drive brought me to Chicago Bagels over on Wurzbach Rd.

As soon as you walk in to CB you’re instantly transported out of San Antonio. At least the San Antonio that I know. CB has the feel of a small deli off the sidewalk in a much more urban city than S.A.. If you don’t look behind you and out the windows you forget that you had to drive to get here. You can, for a moment, pretend you got off the subway 3 blocks down and stopped at the local bagel place on your way to some yet-to-be-determined destination.

The place is small, and everything in it looks as if it’s been there for the majority of my life. The tattooed girl behind the counter fits just as well as the older, weathered man who’s likely the owner. Even the crowd within fit the locale that wasn’t really the locale.

Breakfast was ham, egg & cheese on an onion bagel with a Diet Snapple. It was pretty good. It didn’t seem to be as good as Marty’s Bagels was back in my high school days in New York; but it’s always unfair to compare anything with a memory, as memories lie to us more often than not. So comparisons aside, a Chicago Bagel breakfast was good enough for me to take half a dozen for the road (2 onion, 1 bialy, 1 maple honey, 1 spicy Italian tomato, and 1 everything).

It was a nice way to start a late Sunday and I wasn’t ready to stop being chill. So I’ve headed over to Border’s to hang out in the cafe, drink a chai latte while I write this post. Unfortunately, in order to do that I had to get back in my car and drive a handful of miles up the highway.

Every once in a while I stumble on a pocket of city within San Antonio, always to my delight. Whether it’s that one pizzaria, a little stretch down town that flirts with having actual grit, an equally small stretch off Broadway, and now Chicago Bagels. It’s nice to find these pockets, but they’re also a reminder that I should really go find some place that doesn’t require you to drive 20 minutes to get a little city.

Maybe what I should do is sell my house, quit my job, and move to another city. Hmm… that does sound like an idea! But I really should sleep on it before I commit to such a wacky plan…

So like I said the other day, I got an alarm system. I chose to go with Guardian Protection Services for two reasons. The first was because my house was wired with a Ranger American system and Guardian bought out Ranger American. The second, and more substantial reason, was because a friend & coworker just recently had a Guardian system installed and he was happy with their service. Unfortunately though, I have not had an equally positive experience.

It all started this past Saturday morning. Guardian was supposed to show up in the morning some time after 10 a.m.. It was roughly around 10 in the morning that you would have found me sitting in my living room wearing nothing but my boxers, eating cereal and frying my eyeballs with SpongeBob SquarePants: Season 2. Guardian would call 30 minutes before they were expected to arrive so that I would have time to dress myself. Then, the doorbell rang.

Moment’s later I was dressed and Chris was allowed in. He was there for a couple of hours setting the system up. After he finished we did a quick walk through and made sure all the sensors were working by opening & closing windows and doors. Then he informed me that owners manual for my system could be found online at the manufacturer’s website; and with that he was on his way. Unfortunately I was to new to recognize what I wasn’t getting:

1. Alarm went off at 3:47 a.m.
2. Never instructed on how to:
1. erase alarm memory
2. change master code
3. add / delete guest codes
3. No phone numbers listed anywhere.
4. Never received lawn sign or window decals.
5. Never received manual (yes, I was told they’re online, I’ll get to this in a second).

So there I was. Wired. Monitored. Safe. You can only imagine how secure I felt that late night when, after an evening at the bar with a friend, I crawled myself into bed in the early hours of the new day knowing that I could not be taken advantage of during what remained of my drunken stupor. Yes I drifted away and enjoyed almost two solid hours of sleep before the alarm went off at 3:47 in the fucking morning!!

That’s right, the sensors in the living room windows went apeshit and thought it would be quite a humorous prank to pretend someone was breaking in to the house. After stumbling to the control panel I deactivated the alarm. Then I stumbled my way to the windows to see they were closed, locked, and unmolested. Then I stumbled my way to my cell phone which was ringing as the folks at Guardian were calling to find out if I was dead or not. I assured them I was safe and attempted to re-arm the system. Since I was never instructed how to bypass the no-longer-responding zone (it’s in the manual) I could not re-arm the security system. So I gave up.

I then proceeded to grumble, rumble, and stumble my way back to bed. That was Day One with the alarm.

The next morning I went online to find that manual. I needed to learn how to operate this stupid thing. Among the great many things I don’t know in life, the model number of my control panel was one of them. So after getting to the website I had to do some sleuthing to find out which of their many, many control panels had found it’s way into my house. After doing so I happily clicked on the “Owner’s Manual” link. I was instantly rewarded with an error message insisting that only registered users may get owner’s manuals. Thanks a lot Chris. You were technically correct, the owner’s manuals are indeed online. But you failed to mention that I can’t actually download a fucking copy!!

I called customer service and bitched about the many things that were not done correctly. I was told that on Monday morning someone would contact me to set up an appointment for a service technician to come out and look at my system. That night, at 2 in the morning, those mischievous little windows did it again. Though I was quite sober and readily prepared this time. The alarm was deactivated, zone bypassed, and I went to sleep.

I got a call yesterday from Guardian’s local office and an appointment was made for a tech. to come out today. I was told sometime from 1:00 to 5:00. “Can we get a smaller window?” I asked, as I didn’t want to take the entire afternoon off of work. I was told that they could call me 30 minutes prior to arrival (ha, we heard that one before, right?).

“Can you make sure that happens, because you were supposed to call me on Saturday and no one did. Tomorrow I’m going to be at work until you call me so if you don’t call me I won’t be home,” I explained.

Annie assuaged my worries with a confident, “We will definitely call you before we come out tomorrow.” (You know how this one ends, but let’s say it anyway.)

Monday night: zone bypassed before I went to bed this time (see? I learn!). I awoke this morning to find that the windows did in fact lose communications with the alarm system. No problem, service tech’s coming out today.

Today at 2:52 pm my phone rings. “Who was it?” you ask? Why it was none other than Annie at Guardian Protection Services! “I’m sorry Mr. Tyler, but the 30 minute notification we promised you didn’t happen. The service tech is in front of your house right now.”

“Well I’m at work. I can leave right now but It’s going to take me 20 minutes or so to get home.”

Shortly thereafter I arrived home to meet Vince, my service tech of the day. Within 30 minutes Vince had replaced the sensors, checked the system again, given me my house sign and window decals, and not only gave me a little manual but also included quick tutorial of several topics I quizzed him on. Vince had his shit together, I’ll give him that… but the real test will be tonight when I go to sleep without bypassing the windows.

So that’s my first 4 days with an alarm system. Guardian has done anything but impress me. This is made worse by the fact that this is what they do. I didn’t go to a tire shop and ask them to inspect my battery. I went to an alarm company and asked them to install an alarm.

Let’s just sell this damn thing and move out of Texas…

I’ve always realized that I’m pretty lucky when it comes to neighbors. I live in a blue collar neighborhood without a home owner’s association. Two characteristics I was specifically looking for. In the 7 years I’ve lived here the neighbors have all done their part to prove that home owner’s associations aren’t always required to keep a neighborhood from going to shit.

I know all (but one) of my immediate neighbors and several more within a stone’s throw. The night I came home to find my house sporting a broken window I went immediately to ask my next door neighbor if anyone had seen or heard anything. Soon two other neighbors heard the news and then it spread like wildfire.

My one neighbor, Scott, made it a point to tell everyone he could and ask if they heard or saw anything. He was, in all honesty, angrier about the situation than I was. In fact there were a couple of neighbors who seemed like they were ready for a good ol’ fashioned lynching. It was an unusual time for me when amongst a crowd I was the calm one. But the point wasn’t lost on me. These were good people who were angry about crime in their neighborhood, but these were also caring people who were upset that I was broken into.

When I commented that I would not be sleeping in the house that night, but instead would head to a hotel, three different neighbors opened up there homes to me. Insisting that it would be no bother and offering whatever assistance they could. What more could you ask for from neighbors? Honestly?

I’ve mentioned before that I’ve got good neighbors. But the burglary showed me that I’ve got more than good neighbors, quite a few of them are great neighbors. I lucked out here.

Before the burglary I used to keep the spare keys to my house in the nightstand by my bed. I really had no better place for them and I never considered what the security implications where if someone one day broke into my house. Well I never considered it until after someone broke in. Then I thought, “what a stupid idea that is.”

I wasn’t positive that one of the spare keys were taken, but I thought that one of them might’ve been. So just to be safe I changed the locks on my front door and garage-to-house door.

Well, take a guess what I found on the floor in below my front door today. No no no, why the hell would I have found a turtle wearing a summer dress?? Stupid guess. No, I found a key. I went to the trash which still contained some of the old spare keys and compared. Sure enough, they matched. My wanna-be-house-mate(s) returned sometime in the past two days and attempted to walk in the front door.

What amazes me is that the key was just left on the floor afterwards. There are some things about the burglary that seems painfully amateur, and others that seemed like he/she/they knew exactly what they were doing. Seriously, who just drops evidence that they were there like that? –sigh–

This whole this is annoying and incredibly frustrating. I just want out. I just want to leave. It’s like I’m being forced to deal with this when I don’t have any real good answer to do so. Does it make sense to consider an alarm system when I’m hoping to be out of here in the next 2-4 months? I don’t know. I’m really getting fed up with this though.