I had such a bad night last night!

As I mentioned before, Lance is in Cape Town for a few days, and when that happens the boys sleep with me and I lock the bedroom door and set the alarm in the rest of the house.

Now, in addition to the house alarm, we also have security beams in the garden that are linked to a seperate alarm.  The beams cover most of the garden, and act as a warning to us and would-be intruders.

Last night, at midnight, the beams went off!  OMW did my heart drop. Before I disabled it, I checked the panel and noted which beams had been triggered – and 2 had been.  And that’s never happened before. On the odd occasion we’ve had one of the beams set off, but only if the garden gate is closed and a stray cat climbs over the wall.

So, I unlocked and opened the bedroom door trying to figure out in my haze, who to phone… and I set off the house alarm. 

Anyway, to cut  a VERY long story short, ADT (the armed response company that we’re linked to) came in less than 3 minutes, I was seriously impressed.   He checked the property, but there was no-one by that stage.  He thinks, and I think, that there was someone on the property… this wasn’t a false alarm… especially because 2 beams went off.

This morning, I checked the garden, and I think I know where they came in and got out. I think they climbed a tree in my neighbours garden and jumped from there over his electric fence into our garden, and set the one alarm off… and then they ran across the garden (setting the other beam off) to a piece of wall where I’ve just removed a creeper… and jumped into another neighbours garden. 

I removed the creeper because our other neighbour has just installed electric fencing, and the creeper would have damaged it.  He installed electric fencing because someone got into his property by jumping a wall, and his car was broken into… 3 weeks ago!

Scary shit!  Needless to say, I didn’t sleep much last night.

At least the beams are doing their job, and stopping people from breaking into the house!

Hope I have a better night tonight, but at this rate, I doubt it.

I worked late last night, very late in fact. If you follow me on Twitter or Plurk, you’d know that I was at work until very late. I only got home at 00h20 in fact! It was a very long day.

Let me explain why I think I’m lucky…
I left the office at around 23h40 and had to walk to my car. In our building it generally takes me around 10 minutes to get to my car… and I walk FAST (ask any one of my friends how fast I walk). I have to go through the rabbit’s warren of the office building, and then through an underground parking garage to another garage and then up 8 floors in a lift to my car. Then I wind my way down the 8 floors to get to the booms, and under another building to finally get to the road… where there’s a robot… a very slow robot at that time of night.
Oh and, I must add, I saw none of the usual security guards in the parkade last night.

So, in my wisdom, I decided not to wait at the robot for it to turn green. I just made sure there were no cars close by, and I got onto the main road and travelled home. And I got home safely.

Then this morning, a colleague of mine tell me that his wife phoned him at 11h50 to say that someone was knocking on their door and crying. She was too scared to open, and wanted him to come home (he was still at the office). But he told her that she must be dreaming, that their block is safe.
When he finally got stopped at the complex gate half an hour late, there were loads of cops etc around. And the reason…
His neighbour was high-jacked while entering the complex and the guards were held up too. Thankfully no-one was hurt. OMG!

Now, my colleague lives one apartment building away from that VERY SLOW robot!!

Thank God I decided not to stop! Or else, it could have been me!