o_bunny | Remember that nice van we used to have???

The operative word is, of course, “used to”. Two words, operative two words.

My sweetie, looking out at around 9:30 AM to see how much snow we had to scrape off the van today, saw that there was nothing to scrape snow off of, woke me, and thus began my day of talking to

the police,

my insurance agent,

the police (again),

my insurance agent (again),

three insurance claims people:
- one for the van itself (three times),
- one for its contents (once),
- one who answered the phone when one of the others was on another call,
a bunch of car rental folks (some several times; try to imagine how hard it is to rent a car on Christmas eve, during a transit strike -- it's actually much harder than that),

etc., etc., etc..

I'd looked out at the van last night (December 23^rd), and all was well. On December 24^th, Dave Eh?, our neighbour to the east, noticed the van in the drive as he left for work at 6:30 AM; Marion, our western neighbour, noticed that the van was not there at 7:30 AM.

The problem with the contents is that I'd been the sound guy for a Christmas party, and hadn't unloaded the van 'cause I really still need some help for that. As a result I had a small PA system left in the van, which is now missing. Mixers, amplifiers, speakers, CD player, microphones, stands, cables, gone.

Yes, I do realize that nobody was physically hurt, it was only stuff, and stuff can be replaced. But it was MY stuff, dammit. We'd spent a chunk of money on the car in the past year, planning to keep it for a while yet. And the audio gear had been collected over quite some time, picking carefully and choosing only good gear. Yes it was insured, but still...

Sigh...