If I were a more religious person, I would not be writing this entry now. I would be standing downtown in rags holding a sign that said, "REPENT! THE END IS NIGH!"

Just an overview of what has happened in my neck of the woods in the last 24 hours:

• Plane crash. Last night a small plane crashed just short of the runway north of here, killing two people onboard. I didn't think much about it until...

• School shut down. Further north, a school will be shut down tomorrow so that police can search lockers in the school. Students called death threats into the school, and the search is being made to prevent a Columbine-like tragedy. I don't know anyone who goes to that school, so I didn't think much about that, either. Until...

• Train accident. I don't have many details on this, but here is the gist of it. Just west of here, some telephone company workers were putting up phone lines across some train tracks in the downtown area of a small city. But while they were doing this, a train came through and snagged the lines. Chain reaction: train pulls lines, lines pull poles, and several phone poles were ripped out of the ground, tying up traffic for hours. Strange. But wait, there's more...

• Building collapse. This happened a few miles east of here at an old ammunition dump, which hasn't been used since the Vietnam War. (Although the Nation Guard trains there.) A building, which was being demolished, collapsed on two workers, killing them both. frown That was strange. But there was a coup de grace to the day...

• Blimp crash. The Spirit of Akron, a Goodyear blimp, the pride of our area... It crashed into a wooded area near its hangar, just south of here. It's a $4 million dollar airship, and it is huge. Quite impressive, in fact. According to witnesses, the blimp went down nose first into some trees, where it ripped and collapsed. There were two people onboard, but neither was seriously injured, thank god.

This last bit was a major inconvenience to me, since our late drivers use the road where the blimp crashed to get back to the garage. All of them needed to detour around the area, since the road was closed. I was very late getting home.

But look at the distribution of these events. North, west, east, south... I feel like there is a huge bull's eye painted on my town, waiting for the next disaster. Could it happen tonight? Tomorrow? Or possibly on Saturday?

You see, Saturday is the Big Huge Party.

Every year, 10,000 to 30,000 people from all over the state converge on my town to party for Halloween. Neighboring cities loan out their officers to my town to help with crowd control. The police will be decked out in riot gear, and K-9 officers will be making themselves quite visible.

Will I go downtown? You bet your pink socks I am! Wouldn't miss it. To be truthful though, all these recent "happenings" have been making me nervous. I'll be keeping my eyes open.

So if there's no entry Sunday, you'll know I was incapacitated in the ensuing riot Saturday night. If so... well, it's been nice knowing you.