(no subject)

[hummingbirdmadgirl]

For christmas last year, my brother in law got me a fitbit. i don't use it to track sleep or calories, but i do use it to track my steps each day. it's been a great motivator since it holds me accountable for my movement. there are some frustrating things like the fact it doesn't know when i'm standing vs sitting or when i'm using my arms (90 minutes of poi mean nothing to fitbit!) but i love it. it's also good because it keeps me accountable for making sure that Bones gets enough exercise too. He loves to walk, though as it's been warmer out we've been taking longer walks in the evening with a few shorter walks during the day. french bulldogs are notoriously bad at regulating their body temperature due to the shape of their heads so taking him for long walks midday is just out. but making sure he gets exercise is important since if he gets too fat, getting him back to a healthy weight would be difficult (again due to the breed's tendency to overheat). So during the day we have a couple short walks and at night we either walk him on the canals or on the boardwalk. he's a total rockstar on the boardwalk with people taking his picture, playing with him, you'd really think he was part of the unofficial show that is Ocean Front Walk. I always love those walks the best, it's a dramatic contrast to the multi million dollar serenity of the canals, but he always seems -so- happy after hitting the boardwalk, there's always just this adorable bounce in his step after getting lavished with love from strangers and he'll look up at me or ethan with this doggie grin that almost says, "i wish we could do this every day!"

a year or two ago the city of Venice put all these new ordinances into play to clean up the boardwalk, probably in an effort to make it more appealing to all the silicon beach people moving in along with the Google offices. They cut down on performance artists, what people could and couldn't sell on the boardwalk, and they banned dogs on the weekends from 11am to 8pm, which is kind of a bummer, but it has made for some awesome sunset walks along the beach.

last night we were sitting in our tv room when we heard a cacophony of sirens and helicopters. there are usually sirens and helicopters in venice, especially in the summer on the weekends, but this was -intense-, like nothing i had ever heard before. i checked on twitter and saw that there had been an accident on Ocean Front Walk, which in and of itself was horrific. So many people, so many street vendors, it must have been total chaos. At first I thought, like most people did, that it was an accident, that someone was high or drunk and did something stupid, however as more details came to light it sounded scarier and scarier. The driver actually drove half a mile on the boardwalk mowing down 12 people in the process. Security footage showed that he was actively swerving to the left and right, seemingly trying to hit people. It also showed that he stopped his car to get debris off it before continuing on his rampage. I guess an hour or so later he showed up at the Santa Monica police house asking cavalierly "So, here I am, how many people did I kill?"

He killed one woman who was visiting, on her honeymoon, from Italy. One person is in critical condition, and he -just- missed murdering a friend of mine who sells hoops.

I'm just sort of surprised how much this has left me shaken.

Comments

[howlin-wolf-66.livejournal.com]

*hugs*

[rojagato.livejournal.com]

By the time the boardwalk story caught up to me, the alleged guy had already allegedly turned himself in, and I felt myself shaking -- not so much in the same way as the "Boston bombers" had (maybe because things were cooperatively under control in the aftermath?), but more in the way that Amy Lord's murder did. Because it was done on a whim, and very close (chronologically) to that murder, and because assholes just do stuff like choking people and running them over and I don't know how to deal with that crap other than to miraculously survive it.

I hope that your hooping friend is getting through this okay -- was she the person with the flowers laced through her hair in one of the videos? whoever that person was, I was so impressed by her poise.

Even after the bombing, maybe because of it, I'm just odds and ends about feeling secure in a place where previously I might have felt comfortable walking my dog on a starry night with lots of people around. The world gets tinier in some respects; I'm very happy that I live in Downtown Salem where, even with the skanky stuff that happens in a downtown, I feel that I have some agency.

Not to say I'd never walk down Boylston Street, or around Southie again; but I still burst into tears seeing a movie set in NYC with or without the towers, let alone how I feel on a train or plane into or out of the NYC. Still.

Assholes.