Vindicated

Last week, my lovely wife was hinting around about putting up some outdoor Christmas decorations. Our unadorned home is, well, standing out on the block somewhat. My position has been that those decorations you put up on a beautiful fall weekend, you'll have to take down on a bitter Saturday in January, so I have always resisted. Occasionally, especially when the kids were still at home, I would relent with a minimalist scheme intended to reduce my labor to the bare minimum needed in order to maintain domestic tranquility.

There is, however, another justification for my curmudgeonly refusal to participate in the garish commercialization of Christmas. Just as those pumpkins on the porch are nothing more than ammunition for vandals, those Christmas decorations are tempting targets for thieves. This morning in my inbox was this Crime Alert from crimemapping.com:

There you have it, boatloads of expensive décor swiped from lawns right in my own neighborhood. Yet another case-in-point I can pull out to explain to Tonja why I'm watching football tomorrow instead of stringing lights and inflating snowmen. I am vindicated.

Everyone in Lincoln should subscribe to Crime Alerts from crimemapping.com. For that matter, everyone in any jurisdiction that provides its data to the Omega Group for crimemapping.com should do so. Here in Nebraska, that's Lincoln Police, Omaha Police, Lancaster County Sheriff, and Grand Island Police. I'm signed up for my daughter's address in Omaha, my son's in Lincoln, and my own. It's free, easy and lets me know in a day when a crime I'm interested in has been reported nearby.