+…And In Other News

I KNEW I was forgetting at least one important thing!  Theosis reminded me.

Yes, I got the car back, about six weeks after it was taken.  Mostly undamaged.  I had to replace the key cylinder, which means I have a different key for the ignition now than for the door.  Oh well.  Apparently the key cylinder was so worn down that the thief only had to break off the clip from one of my mechanical pencils and stick it down in the ignition to turn it.  Tumblers, what tumblers? 😛

The irony is that it was found just two blocks from where I live – in a direction I never have occasion to walk, though, so I never noticed.  I asked the cop, “How long has it been sitting here?” and he said, “A month.”  Gee, why didn’t you INFORM ME BEFORE NOW, I wanted to ask.  Technically I’m not supposed to park downtown (due to a stupid and unfair city ordinance) so you’d think they’d have noticed in order to ticket me, if nothing else. 😛  Isn’t bureaucracy fun?  Your tax dollars at work…

Anyway, the thief was so kind as to leave the windows unrolled… so the interior of the car was pretty soaked.  My friend Chris in the PoP took matters in hand, though.  He knew how to dry the thing out with a space heater, and indeed it’s good as new now.  He also replaced the key cylinder for me, though he spent fruitless hours trying to figure out how to get the new one in before realizing he had to shut the door for it to work. 🙂

So, the community ended up just paying for the key cylinder (about $60) and a Club to prevent this from happening again, rather than buying me a new car.  And here I was just getting pleasantly used to the idea of replacing the ol’ bucket of bolts! 🙂

But the good news is that they didn’t deep-six the thing, or otherwise trash it.  I was fairly sure they hadn’t, actually… Shortly after it was stolen, the Lord let me know, “I’ve got it all taken care of,” so I figured I was in good hands. 🙂