To Catch a Thief

As I type, I think someone may be breaking into my apartment. Old-school style, with a black ski mask and a crowbar and maybe a cape as well, because I feel like you can't be a proper burglar without a cape, and perhaps a hamburger too. (Though come to think of it, that may not be the most appropriate attire for a heist at 2 o'clock on a Wednesday afternoon.)Or I could be totally overreacting, as I usually do in situations when...well, as I always do. Our neighborhood is not the safest in the world, though by no means is it dangerous. My roommates and I live townhome-style apartment downtown, a few blocks from where all the tall buildings start to sprout up (I say tall buildings rather than skyscrapers, because please, this is Columbus). The street we live on is quite nice and the residents we've met seem very friendly, but go a few blocks north and you're in a rather dodgy area. There is a big park nearby, which is home to many a weirdo and homeless person. Though they generally keep to their trees, gazebos, and benches, I would never walk through there at night. I occasionally like to flirt with danger, but it's usually in the how-many-drinks-can-I-have-in-one-night variety.

When we were looking for an apartment last summer, the landlord told us that in the 20-some odd years he had been managing this set of townhomes, he had never had any break-ins or burglaries. Well, his record was shot on New Year's Eve when someone broke into our neighbor's garage and stole his tools and snow blower (and it just so happened that it snowed a LOT the next day, so I am thinking the thief was a meteorologist of some sort...yes, I am looking at YOU, Ben Gelber!). Bill, our neighbor, left to go to the office at 5am (yes, he is a night owl...perhaps a vampire?) and remembers shutting the door behind him as his wife still slept upstairs (in her coffin, surrounded by bats and cobwebs and lots of dark red velvet). The door was still shut when he came back a few hours later, but when he pulled into the garage he noticed that the aforementioned items were MIA. He called the police, who determined that the thief must have had some sort of special frequency garage opener thingy (the technical term, obvi).

And so now I am a wee bit paranoid. Megan and Rose both keep their golf clubs in our garage, but other than that all we have are some empty boxes and a bag of dirt from that time I pretended to be a gardener over the summer. Not much a thief would want. So maybe my mind was playing tricks on me when I opened the garage this morning and saw a white car idling just to the right of our driveway, in the sort of tricky half-parking-spot where cops loooove to give tickets. Our street almost always has cars parked all the way down both sides, but residents have figured out that this spot is to be avoided like the plague.

I stood and looked at the white car for a few seconds, but the driver hightailed it out of there almost immediately. No squealing tires, but I think he hit the gas a bit harder than was necessary. Maybe he had parked there overnight and was warming up his car, then decided it was warm enough just as I walked out. Or maybe not. But if anyone so much as lays a PINKY on my beloved Powerbook, I swear to the high heavens that they will forever rue the day that they decided to do so.Any suggestions on how I can make my apartment safer? We have locks on all the windows and doors, and I am pretty OCD about making sure they are ALWAYS locked. And notice how there is nothing even remotely valuable of mine in the garage (they can have my $8 bag of dried dirt for all I care). But what else? What about the door from the garage into the hallway next to my room? Should I dig a pit for piranhas on the other side? A gate of spikes that crashes down on unwanted intruders?Should I buy a doberman? Should I quit my job and just sit at home all day long consumed by thoughts of DOOOOOOOM?