The whole hostage episode ended the next day (Monday) at about 2:30pm. I’d just gotten back from the grocery when a VERY loud boom rocked my building. It was a concussion grenade that the SWAT team used to blow out the back door. They also used 10 teargas canisters.
The woman that had been held ran out of the apartment when the perpetrator fell asleep. He immediately shot himself behind the right ear. He did not die immediately, but he never regained consciousness and died a couple of days later. Thankfully.
I got an interesting call the other day, from an old associate that I worked with at SoftKey (aka The Learning Company). It seems that he is managing some small computer stores up in Knoxville and he wants me to manage for him when they open here in Atlanta. The pay is very good for retail ($45k). I’m interested in the income, but selling frankenstein PC boxes is not my idea of joy. I will NOT have to work on them at all (supposedly). I’ll just bet that they will put the first one way out in bumfuck Alpharetta or somewhere else equally as repugnant. And they’ll want me to drive all that way in the lovely Atlanta gridlock as well. Ummm, no thanks. I would be an unbearable bitch if I had to deal with that everyday! (Go ahead. Laugh. I know you will anyway!)
The most fabulous holiday of the year is only a few days away! Samhain (pronounced SOW ahn, like cow on. Eh, it’s Gaelic, don’t ask…), or Halloween, is my very favourite holiday. For Wicca and other nature based religions, Samhain is a festival of the harvest and the traditional slaughter of the animals that will not make it through the winter. Of course, very few of us prepare our own meat, so that part is not practised much any more, but the harvest and ensuing celebration of the generous Earth is practised extensively. If you’d like more info on Wicca or other non-mainstream religions, please visit the ultimate Craft site: Witchvox.
In Mexico, Oct. 31st is the Day of the Dead, a very important religious occasion to revere and hang out with your dead ancestors. Food and drink is taken out to the family plots and everyone spends the night out in the cemeteries. Skulls and skeletons made of sugar are a favourite treat. Don’t ya just love the way Catholicism and the tribal religions blended down there? I think it’s fascinating.
For my little tribe here in Decatur, Halloween is not religious, but just a damn good party! My friend Jody has the Wild Kingdom Halloween Party every year (this is the 4th), complete with a theme and everything. Last year it was Prom Night. This year it is Celebrities. I have no idea who I’m gonna be
Well, that’s all for this week. It has been blissfully uneventful other than getting a new furnace today that sounds like a freaking freight train.
Om shanti.