The morning started out pretty interesting. On my walk with Angel, I observed a guy pulling up to a house with his headlights off (it was still dark out), back into the driveway, and then go up on the porch and stand there until he thought I'd gone around the corner. Really, I'd just sort of ambled behind a tree with the dog. Then I watched as he climbed up the porch rail and go into the house through a second story window. Shit. Luke and Mason got robbed a couple nights ago. The robbers were going out the back door when Mason got home. Somebody else got robbed earlier in the week. The lady had been working on the house until 2 in the morning, and she'd been robbed when she came back at 9 a.m. So we know it's somebody who's watching the houses.

I thought about pounding on a nearby door, but then I thought somebody might shoot me, so off I went to run home. About four and a half blocks, two of them uphill. Angel didn't really understand why we were deviating from our normal walk route. Got home, called 911, the cops were at that house in about three minutes. The cops around here really hate serial burglers and they bust ass when they think they've got a lead.

Turns out it was a kid who'd locked himself out of the house. Or at least that's what he told the cops. In my opinion, a kid who's just coming home at 6:30 in the morning and climbs into a second story window (I never saw him knock, or try the knob, or pat himself down looking for keys) is a kid who snuck out all night and is sneaking back in. My advice, when you know somebody has seen you, knock on the damn door, wake up your mama and take the heat.

Can you imagine being that teenager? Being busted sneaking in in the morning because a buttload of cops have surrounded your house and are pounding on the door? I hope his mama puts his ass through the wringer. I am, however, sorry for any inconvenience or fear that I caused the rest of his family.

I'm reading a great book, "Dead Engine Kids," a gathering of the wartime diaries of several men on the same flight crew of a B-17 serving in the England and making bombing runs into Germany, France, and Holland so far. The book was put together by John Welch, the copilot. But the most extensive diary is from a guy named John Briol who was the ball turret gunner.

The men write about things like how thankful they are for their electrically heated flight suits, watching a turret gunner falling away from a broken up plane, still in his turret (the turrets were too small to accommodate a man wearing a parachute), and how they only get one meal on they days they fly, days that start at 2:00 a.m. and end many hours later after the men have gone through a harrowing run through flak and fighters, and watched the planes around them go down or blow up in the sky.

I don't understand why they don't teach more human stories in history classes. Or at least they never did in mine.

My 50,000th visitor has come and gone. As near as I can figure, it was someone whose domain name shows up as PAVILON, and the visit was in the morning on Jan. 23. Is it you? You get a prize if it is. I don't know what yet. Depends on what you want.