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September 23, 1999 |
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gone gone gone |
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Today's Starting Pitcher: Kent Mercker Today's Reading: Danube by Claudio Magris
Copyright © 1999, Janet I. Egan |
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When I went to bed last night, my car was parked in its assigned parking space in the parking lot behind my unit. When I woke up at 7:50 this morning, the parking space was empty. It's an eerie feeling to look out the window and not see the car. I kept wondering if I'd parked it somewhere else and forgotten. It just disappeared while I was sleeping. There when I went to bed. Gone when I woke up. Gone gone gone. I actually walked around the parking lot looking for it to convince myself it was really gone before I called the police. Make coffee. Call police. Just a typical morning. Why would somebody want the Auntmobile? It's old. It has a broken taillight from yesterday's bizarre accident. I'm sure there are juice boxes I have yet to excavate from deep under and between the seats. And I never really got that Mondo Global Grape stain off the back seat, though it's mostly gone and barely noticeable. The officer came and took my statement pretty promptly. North Andover cops are pretty good as small town cops go. He said Accords are popular targets for thieves for the parts. He also said they'd probably find it pretty quickly. This doesn't really comfort me. I took care of calling the insurance company and trying to call CellularOne to cancel my phone. I wanted to cancel the phone anyway and this gave me a new urgency to do it. But boy do they make it hard for you. I got put on hold 5 times, each for about 20 minutes without getting through either to the person I'm supposed to report the phone theft to or the person in charge of canceling service. Finally, late this afternoon I got through to the service canceling person who of course tried to talk me out of it by offering me an upgrade to a new phone if I'd just have them deactivate the stolen one and stick with them. Then of course she chided me for not reporting the phone stolen first thing this morning. It's not like I didn't try! Besides that, the car is a much bigger deal. It took all day, but I finally canceled the phone. I should point out, for younger readers, that this is one of them there old fashioned cellphones that used to be known as a car phone. It plugs into the cigarette lighter of the car and is about as big as a house - no, maybe as big as a Vikram Seth novel. It doesn't fit in your pocket. See, one of the problems I have with technology is that I never just upgrade for the sake of keeping up with the technology. If the thing still works, I keep using it. Hence my television, which is not cable ready and doesn't have a remote (but soon I will get a new tv and cable - as soon as the Red Sox clinch the wild card). Enough digression about the unlamented Motorola bag phone (that's actually what it was called - it's built into a leatherlike carrying bag). Enterprise doesn't have any cars available until after the "end of the work day" so I'm housebound. I fiddle around with my web page, but can't transfer any files to bluetarp with any of the ftp programs I have (this got fixed later). I wander around wondering how I could have misplaced my car. How can it be there one minute and gone the next? Did the accident yesterday have anything to do with it? How could I have left my binoculars in the car? What kind of weird karma is this? I started making a list of everything I will need to replace if the car is not recovered:
That'll teach me to ever leave anything in my car ever ever again! At least my precious little notebooks with every bird ever sighted at Watchemoket Cove are safe on my desk. So in case I ever need their irreplaceable data to keep the Corps of Engineers out of the cove again, I've got it. People keep calling me to sell me long distance service, windows, and replacement windshields. I think I blew the mind of the Ocean Glass sales lady when she asked if I had a crack in my windshield 'cause they're running a special on windshield replacement. "Not any more, I don't. My car was stolen this morning, so unless you're running a special on replacement cars I'm not interested." This just in: just before 10:00 tonight the police called and said my car had been recovered and it is not drivable. The air bags are gone - apparently Honda Accord air bags are a big black market item, who knew? - and the car is basically trashed. They gave me the phone number of the place they towed it to from Lawrence, where they found it. I called the place but they won't let me see if any of my stuff is still there until after the police have collected any evidence ad the insurance company has looked at it. The insurance company can't even look at it 'til the police are done with it. But at least I know it was really stolen and I haven't lost my mind. Damn! |
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