Blessed by the Potato

It’s hard to think of a good introduction to this sort of news, so instead I’ll just get into the nitty-gritty: 3 cars were stolen out of our driveway this morning.

The thieves broke into the house through the side door, took the car keys off the hall table, and just drove off into the night. They didn’t touch anything else in the house, not even my dad’s wallet which was also on the hall table, which sort of indicates that this is a pretty professional operation. The bulldog was asleep on the couch downstairs, not 10 feet from the table and never made a sound. I think she’s fired from guard dog duties now.

So, as we woke up and looked outside this morning, the driveway was empty. Gone was my brother’s ’03 Accord, my dad’s ’04 Mercedes sedan (a nice one), and my mom’s brand new ’06 Mercedes SUV. My car was still there, thanks in part to being shitty, and thanks in part to the fact that I never leave my keys on the hall table. I wonder if some of the other cars would have been spared if we had left my car closer to the street like it usually is (my mom was planning on driving somewhere first thing in the morning and so we swapped cars around just before bed).

The police came shortly after we called, but didn’t find anything useful around the hall table or back door. We went through the process of giving descriptions of the cars and their contents, then tried to call Mercedes to activate the GPS tracking on my dad’s car. That was a complete farce. First, we tried calling the dealership, but they were closed. Then we called the roadside assistance number, and they told us that the tracking would be done through the dealership and they couldn’t help us. We told them that time was of the essence and the dealership was closed, so they gave us another number to try, which just had a recording that business hours are monday to friday, 9 am to 5 pm…

We let the police try after that, and they managed to get someone else (I think it was at the dealership and it was just getting close enough to 10 am that someone was there to pick up). This person was also somewhat useless, needing both my dad’s security word (which was set 2 years ago and tough to remember) as well as a police case number. The officer told him that we didn’t have a case number yet and gave him her name and precinct #, but it wasn’t good enough, so she had to call back to the station to get them to open an empty case report for us (I gather that typically the report is only opened after the cops get back to the station with our statements). “Useless.” she said “Just useless.” We then had a discussion of how such a high-end car company could have such terrible service. Their website wasn’t really any help either (it didn’t even have a search box!)

We still haven’t heard back from them if they found it or not (and going on 5 hours now), so I suspect that we won’t ever see that car again. My dad made a good point: Mercedes has a bit of a vested interest in not recovering the car since if it’s gone it amounts to a sale of a new car on insurance replacement (and as much of a piss-off as this is, and as much as I try to steer my parents towards a more sensible car, they’re already looking for which Mercedes they want to get to replace it).

At this point I’d like to give out the number the police called, in case it helps other Mercedes drivers in the future (not that any of them read my site): 1-800-750-9018 (I can’t quite read her handwriting, it may be 1-800-756-9018). The (useless) operator she spoke to was #8070, though she didn’t give me her name. (I asked her for all this information so I could write a nasty letter to Mercedes, which will basically be a cut & paste of this entry).

Then it was time to call the insurance company (also in the hopes that they would have contacts at Mercedes to light a fire under their asses about tracking the cars). They were also pretty useless. Chubb not only couldn’t tell us how long it might be before we could look at getting replacement cars (whether we would have to wait until they were gone for 2 weeks, or if the police report indicating it was professional and we probably wouldn’t see them again would be enough to start shopping on Monday)… not only that, but they also couldn’t tell us if we were covered at all, so we’d have to wait until Monday to find out. My dad knows that we are covered to some degree, but he doesn’t know if only the market/depreciated value of the cars is covered, or if their new value or replacement value is. He knows that he upgraded to new coverage for the new year that had more than replacement costs (purchase value plus an allowance for a rental car and to cover taxes, etc), but that policy won’t take effect until January 25. They did say it was unbelieveable that 3 cars were stolen at once like that (5 thefts in a year if you count my car going missing twice — I should start a new category for car theft here). At least we were told that they would cover a rental car for over a week, so my parents have a Jeep Cherokee for the next little while. (My dad’s review: “It drives like a North American piece of shit.”)

Anyhow, I don’t really know what else to say at this time. We’re all safe and alive (and were actually going to have a celebration dinner for my dad, since he got his CT results yesterday and doesn’t have a cancer relapse), though the stress has kind of wiped us out for the moment. My car is still here, and as much as I keep offering it to my parents to use for the rest of the week, they keep insisting that I can’t get back to London without it (there are trains). It was a bit of a pain of the butt trying to book a rental car for them, since there wasn’t anything available at the Discount close to us, so I booked one at Yorkdale. My dad blew up at me when I told him, saying it was too bloody far to go to rent a car, even though he wanted to then drive straight to the cottage to see if his insurance policy was there, and even though it’s the second-closest location to us. I ended up cancelling the reservation and we went with Budget, who we’ve had problems with in the past, but at least they’re closer. (I don’t know why closer matters though, since it’s not like my dad is going to walk there).

Well, it looks like in the future Rogers is going to try to break into the home security market (if you’ll pardon the pun). This is kind of interesting because not too long ago we were debating about whether or not to get a security system for the house here. Part of the issue is that it is a pretty safe neighbourhood. There are a lot of students around, but that also means that there are people out and about at all hours of the night and day. It’s also a rental house, so we don’t have quite as much of a home insurance burden that this would help with, and it would also mean paying an installation fee to improve our landlord’s property…

Anyhow, all that aside I find it funny that I find out about these moves by Rogers not by their press releases, or leaks from within the company, but by being invited to take surveys asking how much I’d be willing to pay for this new service from Rogers (it’s the exact same way I found out about Extreme and Elite before they were announced, though the survey for home phone didn’t come around until after that service had already launched).

I just had a terrible departmental presentation. I was half asleep and it just didn’t fly over very well. There was also some last-minute room and time changes which threw my rhythm off. I had to pace with my giant laptop for an extra half hour, and this computer is the least portable computer I’ve owned since my Dad’s 1984 portable Tandy XT, which was just a regular desktop XT with a handle. Well, to be fair it had a 4″ monochrome screen (originally designed for an oscilloscope if I didn’t know better) and a fold-out, full-sized keyboard, but you get my drift.

My neck has gotten a bit better over the weekend, but now my shoulders are all achy from holding my head at strange angles for two days. It looks like this is the result of some sort of strange bug, because Wayfare, my mom, and my sister all came down with severely sore necks in the last few days. I didn’t feel feverish, but I am running a slight temperature at the moment. I only checked after my mom mentioned that it might be some sort of illness, but it was a strange one because it didn’t have any other symptoms…

I got my breadmaker up and running last night. It’s a pretty nifty little device and does a decent job of kneading the dough, which is all I used it for in my first batch. I just made up some basic pizza dough. The dough that came out wasn’t very elastic in the end, so I couldn’t shape it by rolling and stretching like I usually would, but instead had to basically pound it into my pizza pan. However, the final pizza was tasty and had a good texture, so I’ll take it. After that, I decided to make some bread, and started with their “basic white” recipe. I was surprised at how much more had to go into this supposedly basic recipe compared to the pizza dough. When I saw that I didn’t have everything it called for, I started to improvise, first with 25% whole wheat flour, and then throwing in some ground flax too. The bread came out pretty good, though the crust is a fair bit heavier and darker than the “medium” I set it to; I think next time I’ll have to try light. Bread from a breadmaker is very strange because the pan is very tall and not very wide, so it’s almost like the aspect ratio adjustment I’m having to make with my monitor…

When I was talking about my bread at work, I was told that ground flax only lasts for a few weeks in the cupboard and was cautioned to keep it in the fridge. I just googled it, and sure enough it does have a fairly limited shelf life (though the somewhat biased flax council of Canada gives it a few months), and that worries me just a little bit since I have no idea how long ago Wayfare bought the flax. Ah, well, the bread still tastes fine, and now I’m going to set about turning the other half of it into sandwiches (fortunately, I’ve got 3 different bread knifes here to get just the right slices, evenly thick all over).

Growing up, my parents have always have a ton of kitchen gadgets, from cappachino machines to juicers, deep fryers to smokers — even stone-bottomed pizza cookers — and my mom always cautioned my dad never to get a breadmaker, since that would clearly be the last straw. She always considered the breadmaker to be the gadget that people bought because they sounded neat, but never really ended up using. So naturally, sometime after Wayfare bought me this one but before I opened it, I told this story to Wayfare. “This is it,” I said “I can’t think of anything to get my mom. I’m going to have to resort to getting her the last kitchen gadget on earth, the breadmaker.”

As long as my mind is on food I also got the first season of Good Eats with Alton Brown. This is perhaps my favourite cooking show because he takes the time to explain why he does what he does. He actively encourages us to come up with our own recipes, and explains what each ingredient is supposed to do, and how it can be modified or substituted. I find I still get something out of the episodes that aren’t really of interest to me for the food (of which there are a lot; almost every one, since I’m such a picky eater). For example, the one on steaks wasn’t hugely useful to me, since I’m not really one to go to my local butcher and select the cut of meat for me, then pan-fry that (if I make steaks for friends, I’d probably BBQ anyway). But that episode did have some handy information on cast iron skillets. Likewise, I really disagree with his opinion on mashed potatoes in a number of aspects (adding red potatoes to purposefully make them lumpy? And I’ve never understood the appeal of putting garlic in mashed potatoes), but I finally learned why the Yukon Gold potatoes I switched to for a time after moving out on my own (which the grocery store display says should be good for mashing) never worked as well as the plain baking potatoes my mom used (the baking potatoes are starchier and less waxy).

Anyhow, I’m home with a sore neck. I have no idea how I hurt it: my shoulder was sore when I woke up, presumably from sleeping on it funny (or reaching up to the breaker board repeatedly last night; possibly from curling, too) but my neck didn’t hurt at first. Then I had a shower and let the hot water work out my shoulder for a while, and when I went to towel off, I couldn’t move my neck. I walked to work all hunched over, and of course my office mates laughed at me. When I went down to the cafeteria, a small child looked at me like I was the boogieman, so it must have been a funny posture indeed. After not very long at all, I gave up at work and came home where I can sort of plop myself down on the couch and slouch enough that I can still see the screen with my chin on my chest.