Wednesday, August 06, 2008

Aftershocks

(Not actually "shocks," but "aftermoments of mild startlement" just doesn't have the same ring.)

Christmas or Christmess?
In preparation for the someone from the insurance company who is going to be calling in the next couple of days, I decided to look for any original-packaging type items. I was pretty sure the box and manual for the digital camera were somewhere in the basement, so downstairs I went. Whereupon I shouted the following:

"Hey Dragon? Were you digging around in the box of Christmas lights?"

"Me? Uh, no."

"Well, damn. I guess they did mess around in the basement after all."

A quick check revealed that all of our holiday decorations appeared intact, complete with Sesame Street's holiday-themed DVDs. At least we still have Elmo Saves Christmas! Nothing else appears to be missing, but, well, it's a basement. Here in Wisconsin, we put junk that we're not quite sure what to do with in the basement. I already had to toss a lot of what was down there after our December plumbing adventure, so I'm not clear on what I should be looking for (other than "Are all major appliances still there?" Which they are.)


Adventures in Banking

While looking through the paperwork this morning, I realized I was missing one booklet of checks. Now, they could have already gone to the Great Paper Pile in the Sky, or I could have written them out of sequence. Or they could have been taken yesterday, because even delinquent middle schoolers know what checks are. The nice man at the bank offered to just put a stop payment on that batch of checks, for free, but I bank and pay bills online, man, and you can do that with an account number and a routing number, both of which are displayed prominently on a check. So I made him open a brand-new account for me, and for some reason the branch manager came over to introduce himself. Hopefully, no one will steal our mail over the next couple of weeks. (But if they do, I take comfort in the fact that that's a federal crime.) As I was leaving the bank and heading to work, I briefly wondered if a piano would fall out of the sky and land on my head, or if perhaps a bike messenger would plow into me.

Safe-ty
Dragon called to say that he was leaving work early to undertake some DIY home security projects; anything I needed? I requested that he look for one of those fireproof-box type things, as the police officer recommended we get one of those for sensitive documents and decent-quality jewelry. He brought back a nice one, and now we have to decide where to keep it and its key. Oh wait, I'm on the Internet. Excuse me; he brought back a professional-grade, robbery-proof safe, which will soon be moved to an undisclosed location after we memorize the impossible-to-crack combination.

Thank you for listening. Tune in tomorrow for further adventures from the House of Strep, Spontaneous Vomiting, Relatives with Cancer, and Far Fewer Electronic Devices Than We Had Earlier This Week.

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