A Partial Triumph

As a long time fan of Apple CEO Steve Jobs, I am familiar with the concept of the reality distortion field. The uncanny ability that S.Jobs has to make merely incremental improvements seem profound, is legend among Mac cultists.

I believe that our home exists within a similar field for our friends, who have been so genuinely happy for us that they have been able to overlook the fact that most of the front of it was covered in white paint, some more of it covered in blue. We believe that the paint was so unsightly, that the fact of it contributed directly to our actually being able to purchase the house.

With plans shaping up for our garden out front, and March closing in fast, we knew that we'd have to remove the paint before we put anything in the soil. So, we hit craigslist and cross-referenced the UC Berkeley Parents Network and found someone to remove the paint.

When we told friends that we had someone coming by to remove the paint, most of them indicated that they hadn't noticed the paint. One repeated the peculiar locution that she just thought that we had bought a house. I've always associated this sort of seemingly judgement-free observation with a certain midwest-flavored practicality. Compare then with Kewler Truong, of KB Jet Care, who during the three visits it took him to make serious headway against the paint, expressed profound incredulity that anyone would do such a thing.

We still have a ways to go. There are a few patches of brick that are still more white than not. The paint removal will also necessitate some mortar restoral. I found one chunk of mortar more than twenty feet away from the house. So far, the neighbors have been blessedly mum, though the owner of a gold Volvo hasn't parked in front of our house for a few days.

Buying In

We tell people that finding our brick house was easy, that it was the first house we looked at, and this is mostly true. There is an equally true version of the story in which we looked at houses for five years before we found this one.

We often looked at lofts or loft-like condos in West Oakland, an area that extends from downtown Oakland towards the San Francisco bay. It shares a northern border with Emeryville and western and southern borders with a curve of the 880 freeway.


When I came to Berkeley for college in 1991 there was a highly publicized funeral parade through West Oakland, held in memory of a local drug dealer. It was shortly after this that the television program 60 Minutes described the area as the most desparate in America. A city-within-a-city that had no grocery store, no bank, and a high school grade-level reading capability percentage of two percent(2%).

More recently the area has been in the news as the result of a group of rogue police officers who referred to themselves as "Rough Riders", who among other things were known to physically abuse suspects and non-suspects in between bouts of planting evidence.

After college, I worked in a neighborhood that was in a kind of demilitarized zone between the accelerating genrtification of Jack London Square and West Oakland. The streets were named after types of trees. To get to work I would pick up BART at the Downtown Berkeley stop and get off at the West Oakland stop. A fifteen (15) minute walk took me past the old Red Star Yeast facility, a Postal Service Driver Training course, and finally along several blocks of renovated brick buildings before reaching the one I worked in.


Some of the buildings along my route were abandoned, almost all of them had chain-link fences separating the sidewalk from pit bulls. In this area I felt physically threatened only once, by a homeless man who stood chest-to-chest with me and took off his shades to show me his fabulously blood-shot eyes. West Oakland proper was different.

An acquaintance of ours was mugged walking from his car to the warehouse he lived in. A. and I were driving through a stretch of the area near a large abandoned building that I'd been wanting to photograph. We approached one intersection at a four-way stop where every visible window seemed to have a mattress in it. We opted for a u-turn and got, as my mom and dad liked to say, the hell out of Dodge.

I bring these things up to add texture and perspective to a discussion of the Bay Area real estate market. Depending on the property, depending on the block, A. and I cannot afford to buy a house in West Oakland. There are a variety of reasons why this is the case, not the least of which is that we aren't prepared to leave the hills and be urban pioneers in the flats.

The geographical distinction between the hills and the flats of the East Bay, is a real thing. Banks generally aren't willing to finance in the flats to the degree that they are in the hills. Local newspaper delivery teams divide the bay area up in to vertical bands, ensuring that everyone gets some of the hills and some of the flats. A kind of iconic manifestation of this distinction involves two local hoops legends. Oakland native and NBA-baller Gary Payton brought Jason Kidd from the hills to the flats to toughen him up, to get the street in his game.

One side note, this distinction between hills and flats doesn't quite exist in Berkeley. Even as I acknowledge that there is real poverty and painful need in Berkeley, it's impossible not to feel that the entire city is either gentrified or gentrifying. I do not believe it is possible to purchase a move-in ready home in Berkeley for less than six hundred thousand dollars. I tried to for several months last year, and couldn't.


Which is one reason why we were looking to move into a loft or loft-like condominium in an area synonymous with economic adversity and racial tension. Two years ago we were very close to moving into a loft in a development on West Grand Avenue; about four city blocks west of Broadway. The unit we looked at had views of the bay bridge and downtown Oakland. The selling agent for the development described the neighborhood as transitional, a guy on the street offered to sell me a pair of shoes and then to go get me a pair of shoes in my size, the day we got the contract a murder was reported 3 blocks away. In that particular instance, the ultimate deterrent wound up being the cost of the property.

A. spent most of last year on the east coast studying at Columbia and then Harvard. I spent a handful of weekends in the spring driving from open house to open house with a real estate agent. Photographing each one, and emailing the images back to A. During a visit back home, she and I participated in a lottery for another West Oakland development, called West End commons.

"West End" referred to both the West End neighborhood of London, and an old name for the neighborhood where the buildings were being placed. An area known for streets with girl names and old victorian row houses.

West End Commons was being developed by the same folks who had built the Magnolia Row project a few blocks away. The architect for both projects was David Baker + Associates, a community minded architecture firm that volunteered its services for projects like a housing development for farm laborers near Half Moon Bay. Their work on Magnolia Row garnered several design awards, and the design of West End Commons was sone of the major selling points for the development.

On the day of the West End Commons lottery, no fewer than two hundred (200) pre-qualified people showed up for a chance at one of six (6) units in the development. There was a tent and a revival atmosphere. The real estate developer introduced membersof the sales team to the crowd one by one, to applause. The development was opened to the street, to the side walk. The weather was perfect and what I felt was optimism and a kind of belief.

One year later though, despite the metaphorical streets that run through it, West End Commons is essentially a gated community. The heralded design of the compound looks oddly sterile amongs the old brick and steel buildings that surround it. Not markedly different from the cookie-cutter apartment complex a few blocks away in Emeryville.




More disconcerting, The zoned-for-storefront spaces that several of the units touted --we'd discussed opening a cafe or small restaurant in ours-- appear to be being used as residential space.

I've no doubt that these things do take time, but am beginning to wonder if this specific type of community-building --the integration of a grafted-on upwardly mobile population with a long-time struggling resident population-- is really what we should be working toward.

My skepticism is derived at least in part from the stretch of Park Boulevard that runs from the Glen View neighborhood up the hill from us, down to Lake Merrit. A casual estimate of the populated storefronts along Park would suggest a 60% vacancy rate - despite the density of culturally-diverse, and relative financially secure persons living just north of Park Boulevard. I'm not basing these assumptions on much, just the relative density of folks donating to either democratic or republican parties in amounts exceeding one thousand dollars.



The Park Boulevard vacancy rate, of course, has everything to do with the still and yet more diverse population that lives to the south of Park Boulevard - East Oakland. An area known for "sideshows", crime, and good, cheap ethnic food.

The East Bay is simply running out of affordable housing. The various constituencies of its diverse population are not limiting themselves to neighborhood borders based on distinctions and assupmtions that the real estate market has rendered much less relevant. And, to be sure, "the haves" are bringing this to a head.

Once a transplanted community is established in the outlying areas of a major metroplitan area, they inevitably come in to close contact with the results of decades worth of NIMBY decision-making. Witness the continuing dust up between the residents of Magnolia Row and a nearby recycler.

In West Oakland, multilateral community activism resulted in the closing of the Red Star Yeast facility. The vacant land it used to occupy, and other vacant land will continue to be subject to in-fill development along the lines of Magnolia Row and West End Commons. There are simply too many people willing to assume a mortgage in excess of six hundred thousand dollars for this not to happen.

Each new development seems to be more insulated from the community it has landed in than the last. I've no doubt, for instance, that the tree lined 'lanes' behind the iron gates of West End Commons are, at least in part,a response to the experience of Magnolia Row residents who have to park their cars on the streets.


Which brings us back to our brick house. It was surprisingly easy to wind up here. The first time we went looking at open houses after A.'s trip back east, we stumbled on this place. I'm tempted to call the neighborhood suburban, despite the wall our backyard shares with Oakland High and the border we share with some authentic definition of East Oakland. All of the oakland neighborhoods I've discussed are less than five miles apart from one another.

I don't begrudge anyone --well, hardly anyone-- anything, but it doesn't seem like we've found a way to make this work. The plainest example of this is the city of Piedmont incorporating itself to opt out of the complexity of being part of Oakland.

Some Kind of Rhythm

Looking back over the last few posts, seems like we've fallen into a 'once every two weeks or so' rhythm. Rest assured though that we've been holding forth on diverse topics, and slaying various demons. The first half of February was very busy for both of us. I was involved in the planning and media production for an annual company event, while my lovely and talented wife travelled to Albuquerque, New Mexico. Where she delivered one helluva paper to an audience of 3. I suspect you may have an opportunity to hear more about this.

The annual company event almost always falls during the week of Valentine's Day. Turns out most companies prefer to not conduct week long conferences during that week, and so there are deals to be had on hotel ballrooms. Throw in the Sales Guy impulse to have their own room at the expense of certain creature comforts and refinements, and you wind up in Burlingame drinking pints with your co-workers at "Knuckles' Historical Sports Bar" on February 14th.

Only this year I elected to come home after the event kick-off, stopping at Urban Arrangement to grab the flowers you see here. While I was at the flower stand, a guy wearing a t-shirt printed with the image of a sheet of notebook paper walked up. He was holding the hand of his girlfriend. The notebook paper image depicted sketches and statements indicating his intention to get not one, but two lap dances. He purchased his girlfriend a single long-stem rose.

Trying to find a photo of the shirt online, all I could come up with was this.

Break in the Rain

After several days of rain, we woke up to clear skies and slightly warmer temperatures. We'd turned the heat off and had the doors and windows open by 11 this morning. The weather gave us and the cats a chance to spend some time in the yard. Poor guys have no way of knowing that we've pretty much decided to get a dog. This has something to do with how things are going in the neighborhood.

Most days you can watch school kids doing and selling drugs in the street outside our house, a couple weeks back someone was held up at gun point walking from her car to her house, and a week ago someone pointed a minivan down the hill we live on. The car ran into a parked car in the driveway of the house next to ours; took a few hours for the police to show up. Oddest detail to me was that the bumper of a another car was in the back hatch of the van.


So we're thinking dog. Didn't want a Chocolate Lab, too yuppie. Didn't want a German Shepard, too many fascist associations. Looks like we're gravitating toward a Boxer. Implicit in all of this uncertainty is that we're living in a home for the first time, no neighbors living in the same structure.

Still, as we put tarp down over the weed-infested front yard today, more folks came by and introduced themselves. A woman who shares a studio apartment in a building on the corner, a guy who is refurbishing a 4-unit building that "looks like a swiss chalet", a guy who lives one block over that clutched a leaf the whole time he talked to us.

By the way, we had a tree.

By rights this post should have gone up a few weeks ago. There was, however, a week long period when we anticipated hanging ornaments. We never articulated that our aesthetic points of view were far enough apart that the tree would go without dangling balls and little stuffed monkeys. Still, no one would suggest a lack until last night when a friend asked if we'd started to remove the ornaments in stages.

Hosting Christmas Dinner, and it being our first year in the new house, we went big with the tree- had to saw a foot off the top to get it to fit in the living room.


This is the last weekend we'll spend with the tree. In what's become a three year old tradition, we'll saw the branches off the trunk and let it dry for a year before throwing them in the fireplace next holiday season. Probably some ecologically disastrous reality that completely undermines the sentiment of our tradition, but I don't think we have to worry about masses of people following our lead here.

Taking it all in

Had a setback today with what should have been a reasonably simple repair to the house. The previous owner's installed a water heater that was bigger than the old one.... this had the unfortunate side effect of meaning that the vent hole that had been cut into the brick was below the heater's vent level. So the technical term for what we have is a "negative grade condition", i.e. the pipe points down toward the vent, and in the crook of the vent gas can build up and explode.

You would think the previous owner of the house would be responsible for this. They are after all responsible for ensuring that water heater is strapped into place so that a minor earthquake doesn't topple it, causing it to explode. But we are not so sure. The previous owners disclosed that the vent from the heater to the exterior of the house had become decoupled and that they weren't responsible for coupling it. It has since been coupled --by a nice guy that their real estate agent dispatched-- in a manner that could only be described as a code violation. Still, I can't be sure we're not going to have to take the hit here.

These sorts of things pile up after you move in. The rainy season comes along and the next thing you know there's an inch deep puddle just outside your front door. The brick at the bottom of the puddle, is thick with algae and getting thicker. The puddle is right where your doormat should go, only if you put it there, it gets soaked through and fools people into thinking they should use it.

Meanwhile the brick paths in the backyard are slowly being overtaken by weeds tall enough for the wind to blow them around. Where do these things come from? The plant beds in the back yard were covered in tarp, the tarp was covered over with bark and yet --no matter-- the weeds just keep coming. The problem implies a range of products that I am only dimly familair with, in an aisle of Home Depot that folks who shop at Farmer's Markets probably aren't supposed to venture down.

I am experiencing strange reactions to the weather. I know it takes wind to for a storm to move on, to clear out the clouds and fog. But a morning of 20 to 40 mph winds toppled my olive tree and prompted some sudden staking and lashing of a tree still very much in its' pot. Now we have more atypically warm sun, which makes A. and the cats much happier. But every time the sun comes out, more of the weeds appear.

Maybe the rain going away is a good thing after all though, because I've just noticed that rain water has taken to streaming into our basement. Confounding all expectations, the previous owner placed a drain right where the streaming happens. This is one of the few design considerations that seems to have held up to even the most casual of scrutiny.

The door from the kitchen to the backyard for instance has a threshold that is routinely below the waterline for for the doorway. It is constantly wet, and we've both nearly slipped on it numerous times. All of this does not deter the ants though, who have arrived and just keep on arriving despite daily mass executions. Despite the occasional rendering of their tribe into a kind of paste as we slip our way into the kitchen.

Most of the time I feel that the onus is on us to handle these things with aplomb, to not sweat the small stuff, and to not let the bastards get me down. In closing, I'd like to give a shout out to one such bastard. I don't know who he is but his tag is on the telephone pole outside our house, and also on our garage door:

I Have an Olive Tree

A couple of christmases ago we visited the Ridge winery on Lytton Springs Road. They had large olive bushes on a patio outside the tasting room, and I was hooked more or less immediately. When we entered escrow on the house, one of our first trips was to East Bay Nursery, where I lobbied for a couple olive trees in the backyard. I didn't have to lobby hard. The tree makes a pretty compelling case for itself, and there's an enormous one across the street from the house. Any olive trees of ours would have contextual relevance.

Still, I was thoroughly surprised to come home from work on the night of my birthday and find one in the backyard. I was, to be fair, more surprised to find stakes for it in the bathroom - my first thought was that they were giant rain sticks of some kind. As a friend of mine said,"Wow. What a f*cking thoughtful gift."

It's taken a few days for the weather to be dry enough for me to get out there and photograph it.

Lights out

We took our annual Christmas walk through the neighborhood the other night. We usually stick to our side of the lake, but this year we crossed over the 580 freeway and followed Trestle Glen Road for a few blocks before heading up into the hills between Grand Lake and Park Avenues. It's the sort of neighborhood that folks aspire to live in (whereas people describe our neighborhood as cool or nice). For instance, a guy pedaled up to our place a couple of weekends back sporting several hundreds dollars worth of bicycling footwear. It turned out that he lived on Trestle Glen and was considering buying a place in our neighborhood for his daughter.

It's difficult to describe this area without addressing the relative wealth that distinguishes it. An interesting and possibly telling point: of the 10 businesses Google Maps flag as local to or serving Trestle Glen none are actually on that road. Houses throughout the area are typically large, impressively appointed, and unusually well maintained. Along Trestle Glen in particular, a housing association maintains strict guidelines with regards to yard maintenance (I'm dimly recalling that there is a preferred yard services vendor for the association that is more exclusive than preferred) and appearance in general. In one 2 block stretch I counted 14 wreaths that looked haltingly similar. While this sort of thing is pretty common in subdivisions these days, it is also thoroughly contrary to most people's perceptions of Oakland.

Visiting wealthy neighborhoods to check out christmas lights brings its own set of expectations, and for the most part we were let down. A few houses really went the distance, but mostly we saw big Christmas trees in large street facing windows. Along the way we did notice some new types of christmas lights, including the large nested orb of light you see below.


A tree full of these is pretty impressive:

Light in December

Winter is gathering some momentum this week. We've made multiple braises, concocted multiple squash soups, and the days just keep getting shorter. I grabbed the shot at left after aelis pointed out the sunset, I think it was just after 4:30 in the afternoon. She finds the shorter days depressing, whereas I feel as if I have a special relationship to the accelerating darkness - my birthday falling on the winter solstice. We fall on either side of the question of rain as well.

The quality of light this time of year reminds me of a trip we'd taken to Ireland a few years ago. We arrived in late December and it felt as though there were only a handful of hours of full sun to be had. The photo below was also taken at about 4:30pm, just after we'd come back from an early dinner in Belfast.


Of course, this being California and us living in one large city and very near another, we have pollutants to help give our sunsets additional postmodern oomph:

Frustrated Freudian Flogs Mailboxes

Confession being my preferred rhetorical ploy for introducing guilty pleasures, I will confess to what I see as an entirely uncharacteristic fondness for Federalist-era mailboxes. In addition to the ornate stylings, the eagle motif is a dead give away where Federalist carbon-dating is concerned. Something very satisfying about all of that brass, though for reasons that I guess will only get funnier by the end of this post I'd prefer a black one.

Here's the paragraph of marketing copy that describes the mailbox:

Whether you look at the thickness of the brass, the innovative drain pipe surrounding the flag shaft or the powerful closure magnets on the mail door and locking access door . . . one conclusion is apparent . . . the Classic Mailbox Collection is the best quality money can buy.

You know they are targeting a discriminating audience when the words thickness, power, and shaft all wind up in the same sentence.

anyone wanna bough?

I should feel some twinge of remorse for having killed 25 cedar bushes. Instead, I marvel with a nearly paternal pride (look at that big boy!) at the mass of boughs that nearly fill the garage. Bigger than our car. Doesn't take too long for this pride to dissipate, as getting rid of the boughs turns out to be nearly as taxing and far more time-consuming. Not sure what to make of the hauling business: given the no-shows and unreturned calls, I get the feeling that perhaps haulers aren't doing so badly for themselves. My attempt at giving them away on craigslist as wreath material is an absolute failure. I had imagined some troop making a holiday project... I get several calls and emails from women (only women) interest in, variously, the wreaths, the christmas garlands, wreaths to put in storage for a "Christmas in July Wedding" (Hello? Department of Too Much Information? We have a situation here...), and some who genuinely understand the ad, but who are unable to fit in a bough pick up around their church-going schedule. It takes 4-5 calls to coordinate (one with a husband whose transparent "look, this is not my project"-out was "Can you call back? My hands are full of dirty diaper." No problem. Two days later, one woman comes by and picks out one bough.

Am ready to have a winter solstice bonfire at this point.

red letter day

The gray cat has brought a mouse over for a game of chase. This is the first mouse game in the new house. Curiously, he has brought over a long-unused mouse from the bottom of his toy box. Is this an acknowledgment on his part about the new space? New space, new toy? And if so, what am I to make of the fact that he eviscerates it in a record 3 volleys?

I Have a Vision, Part II

Took all the masking tape and protective tarps out of my study today. I'm pretty happy with the color, almost exactly what I had in mind.

The only gaffe was that the taped I'd masked the ceiling with, well, removed big strips of the ceiling as I removed it. This had me at pretty low ebb last night, more sanguine now though. Here's a shot...

Joining the Club

A couple of years ago we walked through the neighborhood to look at Christmas lights. Even though we rented in a nighborhood with many apartment buildings, students, and young professionals, it was only a two or three block walk from Haddon Hill. The hill is known for Italianate homes that might pass for mansions.

The idea of home ownership seemed like a fantasy, and the other-world-liness of a 3,000 square foot villa was reinforced in some way by all of the light displays. My favorite included giant christmas-light lit flamingoes. As this strains credulity, I'm happy to say I have evidence:



I also have a photo of the lights I put up on our front porch today. Need to get one of those flamingos.

day one in the front yard

It did not take us long to realize that home ownership is simply cleverly repackaged consumerism. In the first seven days of ownership, we made as many trips to our friendly Home Depot. We were both surprised to discover that Home Depot only carries one brand of pitchfork. After all, they do have an entire football-field length aisle devoted to garden tools. Unfortunately, I broke this pitchfork in under an hour of use, so we'll have to find some other purveyor of garden toys.

Luckily, the work gloves fared much better in their first day of hard labor.

"...doing God's work..."

Think we both felt a pang of remorse as we went after the juniper bushes. The junipers were alive after all, and we were about to lay slow and gradual waste to them with a single Fiskar's Pruning Saw. Several folks from the neighborhood went by yesterday without saying anything. I was worried that they thought we'd be paving the front yard. Putting in a nice patio, that kind of thing.

Today was better though. A woman jogged by and shouted that we were,"doing God's work". She also offered up that we should do that same at her house next. Another woman wanted to know what we would be doing with the space. After she left, we spent several minutes offering up other possible responses. I offered up that we were looking for WMDs.

Hypodermics and Hillsides

Began removing shrubs from the front of the house today. Not sure how long they've been there, but along the way I found the drug paraphenalia of at least two generations (hypodermic, aerosol cans), and one ominously heavy diaper.

For a while it was a joint effort. Share a pair of gloves, share a single pruning saw. Then: division of labor. As the sawing momentum picks up, you hit craigslist. Looking for someone to haul the shrubbery away. A surprising number of haulers have online estimating calculators that take into account things like gas from their location to yours.

2 gals with a truck will be here Tuesday morning. All in, looks like 200.00 to 300.00 to haul our shrubs away.

It was one of two major mysteries in our home buying experience, that the previous owners didn't remove these shrubs. The other is that they didn't remove the white and blue paint from the front of the house, but I'll probably have more to say about that after we figure out how to remove it.

It'll be a full weekend's effort to remove the shrubs. Sometime later we'll have to figure out whether the retaining walls stay or go. Then several weekends of soil maintenance and planting. Probably would have pushed the selling price of the house up over 600k.

Another neighbor introduced their self. Observed that she hadn't seen us move in, but knew that we were there. Also, that it took a long time for the house to sell.

I have a vision

Trying to not give much away about the shape of our plans for this place. This applies to my "study" in particular. I can only say the study will feature very dark walls. When I brought this up with some folks who work with me, they made a concerted effort to confirm that I was following at least one established best practice.

To no avail. The room is not particularly big and gets very little natural light during the course of the day. The first picture here was taken mid-morning pointing toward the sun.

We painted sample swatches of the color on a wall about a week ago. Some over primer some on the wall. Realized a couple of nights ago that the swatches made the wall look sort of haunted, and promptly shut the door. If this blog were a novel, The Navidson Record in House of Leaves comes to mind, you'd know that we were in trouble already. As book people ourselves even bringing up the convention seems risky.

But then, I have a vision...

the things they left behind

It doesn't take us long to discover that Mr. and Mrs. Previous Owner left us some welcome gifts.

Even for a word-whore like me, there are moments when the strength of the visual image incapacitates the use of words. Let us enjoy such a moment...

First Night In A Brick House

First night in the new home. our piano has made it down two flights of stairs at the old place and up two flights to our new place. Dozens of boxes of books have migrated, 3 lemon trees too, and it all ends in pizza and beer on the front patio as the sun goes down.

Later friends who helped with the move are long gone, there are good faith efforts to unpack a few boxes before finishing a bottle of Chambolle-Musigny and heading to bed. A cat is taking the move hard. Doesn't move, doesn't support any of his weight when you pick him up. We carry him upstairs to bed with us and pass out.

Until 3:00am. Cat is awake, meowing loudly. The meows echo in the mostly empty space. Take him down to the basement where we put the litterbox. Climb back into bed, and then a high pitched noise sounds. An alarm. As it sounds there are sirens and a helicopter overhead. Or is it just nearby? This is Oakland after all.

Downstairs, turning on lights as you go, you reach the control system for the alarm. The system panel has a yellow light next to the word "armed". Somethings going down in Zone 3, and Zone 4. Looks like that might just be you though as you take in the various sensors.

You hit some buttons and the alarm goes off, make it back up to bed and the alarm starts in again. A neighbor said there car was stolen the night before, that her sister's radio had been snagged recently. Are you really going to have to go down into the basement at 3:00am?

After some discussion, calls seem in order. 911 will send an officer over for a security check, though you have to mention sirens and helicopters before they commit. Then dial information for the number of the security company. The automated voice connects you to the wrong number, before you get through to the alarm company.

They diagnose the problem: the system realized the phone line was disconnected. The alarm company operator can't help without the previous owners' code for the alarm. They tell you that hitting the star key will temporarily disable the sound.

Everyone back to bed, until 4am. A knock at the door. A young police offer says that he is sorry to disturb, you there in your sweats and sweatshirt. A security check is this - they ask if everything is okay.