[5String43]

Right about now, a gated community is looking like a pretty good idea. Our neighborhood is enduring an incredible rash of burglaries. We had five here on Tuesday. These guys - apparently there are at least two teams; a man and a woman and another of three men - hit during the morning and early afternoon, ransack the house, take jewelery, laptops, other things they can walk off with. I'm thinking this would be at least somewhat more difficult to do if the only way into and out of one's neighborhood was through a gate that had a watchman looking after it.

Oh - those burglaries - cops say they're the result of California's court-ordered prison realignment program, which has nonviolent offenders being moved to county lockups, and/or released, to ease overcrowding in the state's prisons. A big mess. But the result certainly has everyone in our neighborhood being very watchful and suspicious of strangers, and has pumped life into the Neighborhood Watch program.