Blessed by the Potato

I got my car back this morning (7 am, ugh). When I was cleaning it up, I found a ton of clues that the cops just don’t care about (I know no one was hurt, so they’re not exactly putting their best man on the case, but you’d think they’d bag some evidence just in case they caught someone else red-handed and wanted to pin this on them, too).

First off, there was a razor blade left on the passenger side. It was one of the 1″ wide disposable construction tool type razors, with 3 overlapping fingerprints clearly on it. I know 3 overlapping isn’t as good as 1 clear one, but you’d think the cops would take what they could get. As I mentioned before, there were McDonald’s wrappers and a cup in the back seat and on the floor on the passenger’s side. There were towels in there, though I’m not sure if they came from my bag of towels in the trunk that was on it’s way to the humane society that was ripped apart, or if they were the thief’s towels. Underneath, there was a brown button (the kind with no holes through it that sew on from an attachment on the back) and half a brick. The driver’s side door had a partial and very muddy boot print on the inside. The stereo when I got it was off, but as soon as I turned it on it was set to level 18 (full blast, essentially) with no CD inside (my CD had been taken and/or thrown out the window).

I know I’m not a cop, and I care a little bit more than not at all, but to me that sort of says “hey, this car was stolen and used to rob a house in a new subdivision, or one that was being renovated.” Sure, it could be that the brick wasn’t from a construction site that night (it could have been used as a hammer to drive out the door lock before the car ever left my lot), and the mud could be from some drug haven by the river, and the whole thing was just for a joy ride and to be destructive… But who steals an old Honda Accord for a joy ride?

Also, the repair shop or locksmith stole my vicegrips (they were there when I got my stuff out of the car).

I’ve been very aprehensive about the upcoming conference in Cancun. The hotel where it’s supposed to be at was ravaged by hurricane Wilma, and wasn’t going to open until a month before the conference (from over 7 months before the conference was to start, that’s a lot of time for something to get delayed). The hotel where all the students are staying is owned by the same company and is sited next door, and wasn’t scheduled to reopen until two weeks before the conference started, and even then under “limited services” (I was thinking no room service, others suggested no air conditioning — ouch!). Given all this craziness and uncertainty, I’m surprised we didn’t end up getting a better rate.

As the renovations took place over the winter, we got semi-regular updates about the progress, which stopped about two months ago. The first hotel (the one hosting the actual talks) was supposed to open last week, but we still haven’t heard any word from them. I just checked the website, and its opening has been pushed back to June 1st. The student hotel’s opening date (yep, the one I’m staying at) has been pushed to June 14 — but I’m arriving June 11!

I’ve sent an email to the conference organizers to see what the deal is; I really hope it’s cancelled. I actually shelled out for travel insurance this time around, and am really dreading moving closer to the equator in June.

Well, I’ve seen lawns toilet papered before, but this is ridiculous:

My building recently upgraded the toilets, and that was the pile made after a single day of renovations (I think it took them 5 days total). I thought they were going to continue to pile on toilets in some kind of monument to the porcelain gods, but on the second day they brought in dumpsters instead.

I don’t particularly care for the new toilets: they work well enough, but the flush lever is way around on the side and halfway down, almost as though they were trying to hide it from you in the dark. They were also installed a few inches from the wall, and have a slightly convex top, so it’s rather difficult to use the toilet tank as a makeshift shelf (our old toilets had a flat lid with a raised lip and were flush with the wall, perfect for battery-powered nightlights, kleenex boxes, and whatever else might need to be put there). Of course, what I’m most concerned about is that my landlords will use this as an excuse to jack my rents in January. Considering they did this as a cost-saving measure (they’re water-saving toilets; new showerheads went in too, and the building pays for the water), it seems like the perfectly sneaky way to screw me later on.

Naturally, I threw the original notice (containing the water-saving motivation) in the garbage as part of my crazy post-thesis apartment clean-up. My place still has a little ways to go yet, but I’ve cleaned up so much it’s almost unbelievable. After snaking my way through piles of paper on the ground, I seem to suddenly have this giant expanse of usable floor space that I just don’t know what to do with.

I still don’t know exactly when I’ll have my car back. After I get it back, I’m going to have to clean it. Wayfare made a good point: I should probably just pay someone to clean it, since cleaning up the mess of the person who stole my car would probably be somewhat psychologically devastating. Anybody know of a good place to go? A chain of some sort would probably be best, since I don’t want to leave the mess there for a week until I get back to Toronto…

Ben’s right, my post did deserve more profanity! I just hadn’t had a chance to see my car to see exactly what those fuckers did to it, so it hadn’t really sunk home yet. I took a few pictures with my camera phone, I’ll see if I can get them on here.

But basically, they just trashed the inside (as you’d expect from someone with so little respect for someone else’s property that they’d break in and steal it). Both front seats have been damaged with puncture marks. The ashtray was torn out (presumably to get at the $45 emergency gas money I keep kept there). The glove compartment was emptied. They had McDonald’s and threw the wrappers and cups all over the backseat. They took my bag full of towels from the trunk and ripped it apart (what, thinking I kept my laptop in a bag full of towels or something?). I keep a tub of road salt in the trunk for emergencies — that was dumped all over the trunk, and then my windshield washer fluid likewise opened and dumped on that to make a congealed salty wreck of my trunk. The poker set was stolen (but the frisbee, thankfully, was not).

Just what the fuck!!?!?!

Edit: The radio was left. Also, about the timing: I left my apartment around 12:30 yesterday, and saw the car was gone — the cops called my parents at 12:47 (just a few minutes before I got back upstairs after talking to my landlord).

Update: Here’s a picture of the broken ignition.

Also, I’m not sure how far the car was actually driven. I thought I filled up in Toronto before coming back to London, which would have left me with about a half a tank of gas — it was sitting at 1/4 full in the lot there, with 380 km on the trip meter (I reset it when I fill up, and I think it should have been at around 300 km when it was stolen). So, that could have been a fair bit of driving with a lot of idling; an outcome that would fit well with my supervisor’s scenario of the car being stolen to commit a few robberies and then being dumped.

I just had another golden idea that I’m going to give away for free: elevator shelves.

How often have you seen someone stumbling into an elevator with their arms full of bags or a box? Quite often, we’ll try to precariously balance our stuff on the handrail to take a bit of the load off as the elevator moves us up or down. Well, what if there was a shelf in the elevator that could fold down (the first thing that comes to mind are the baby changing tables in restrooms)?