I am not sure I am right on this one, but I am going to try a little Carnac the Magnificent imitation.
I am not sure if everyone has run into Google Streetview, but basically Google drives all around the country and takes snappy 360 photos of all the streets that it can so that their google maps product can give you a nice interactive, scrollable, street level view of the surrounding houses, cars, etc. - as if you were standing in the middle of the street right there. Sometimes they run into trouble it looks like (http://sfcitizen.com/blog/tag/ticket/) and they sometimes end up capturing potentially embarassing and personal information comprising photos (http://mashable.com/2007/05/31/top-15-google-street-view-sightings/).
It seems like a neat idea to me, being an IT geek and finding all things digital to be spiffy and all. And then as I was trying to cleanup google maps about LRS (they keep trying to link to lrshpreschool.com which is in NY, the .org is Gloria and John's site) I noticed you can now street view right there on old Highland Ave. (http://maps.google.com/maps?f=l&hl=en&geocode=&q=little+red+school+house&near=Richmond,+CA&ie=UTF8&ll=37.956312,-122.308903&spn=0.030589,0.073986&t=h&z=14&iwloc=A).
Then the fun began. I almost did not notice at first, but I realized that someone was standing at John and Gloria's front door!
I tried to zoom in a little bit, to see if I could tell who it was
but the resolution is so bad that I really could not tell much. I was about to give up - figuring that it could have been any neighbor or friend of the Gardners, or even just a door to door sales person. But then I got a little tickle of Sherlock Holmsean drive to find a better answer.
The person appears to be on the porch and perhaps shorter than the top inset window (that perhaps only Marco, Mark, and I may be able to clearly see into). So I figure they are in the mid range of 5'2"-5"8, not super short, not super tall, not very helpful - but it rules out Marco, Michelle and I! They have dark hair, not too long, basically ruling out Christine and leaving everyone else on the list of potential suspects. And they are wearing jeans, I think, but I can't tell if they are boot cut or casual or comfort or what - but no matter - this narrows the list ... not at all, since I think all of us wear jeans occasionally.
But then I remembered, wait a minute, I love all this funky privacy invading techno stuff, what ELSE is around this scene that I am missing?!? aka - pan the camera and look around idiot! So I looked down the hill ...
... and darn it, but the only thing I find is the old blue ghost truck that I don't think I have seen move in about 5 years, nor do I know who drives it. But I don't think it is my middle heighted, dark haired, jean and maroon (perhaps) top wearing person standing on the porch. So I scroll back up the hill ...
... and no one is in front except for the official LRS white wagon and the neighbor's green truck, *snap*.
Then I finally scan across the street ...
... and BOOM, I think I have it! To be honest, I zoomed in to be sure it was not Christina's red Nissan, but I am pretty darn sure that is a red Honda Pilot! So then glancing back to
, I am pretty sure, but not positive that the hair sweep below the ears rules out Dennis, even though I thought he was normally the one driving the Pilot. So finally all of my detective work culminates in the question, that confirms if my Carnac intuition and Holmsean research is spot on or perhaps it puts my overblown tech geek imagination on the spot ...
Emily, did you see the Google streetview car go cruising by, on a gray cloudy afternoon when you were picking up Peyton a few months ago? ...
~Tom
