And You Thought You Had A Crappy Day

So, you thought you might have had a crappy day. Just wait till the semi-tractor of human misery we call irony rolls over your sleeping body at 6:53 am. You may feel a little bit like Mr. Porcupine there.

After a long shift in a remote camp, I crawled into my frigid bed at about 1:30am on Thursday morning, with the intention of sleeping in. This was not to be. The phone rang at precisely 6:53, blending in with a dream I was having. I immediately assumed that it was work, and I lifted the receiver fully prepared to give any co-worker on the other end a piece of my mind. However, the voice on the other end turned out to be my wife Kira. This puzzled me at first, but judging by the tone of her voice, I deduced that something kind of serious had transpired.

“Someone just stole my car” said Kira.

This awoke my sleeping brain. “Someone stole the Firefly?” I responded incredulously (I wouldn’t of thought ‘91 Fireflies were a commodity in the criminal underworld.

Long story short, somebody (no leads yet) had stolen my former car, and most of Kira’s work gear, from in front of her hotel (hostel actually) in Downtown Victoria.

This creates the dual insurance dilemma: the car with the paper value of approximately nothing, but immense practical value (covered by ICBC): and the thousands of dollars worth of stuff that needs replacing (covered of course by the house insurance). We are the sort of people who have a very high deductible to lower the cost of annual insurance, so it’s going to be a cool grand to replace the stolen gear (the temptation to included a few high priced technical gadgets - like that 7.1 mega pixel digital camera that must have been in the car- is immense).

The irony in this little incident is that Kira is now without a car. How is that ironic, you ask? Well, a mere two weeks ago, right after I bought my truck, I insisted that she haul her decrepit Toyota Tercel to the wreckers. In retrospect a foolish move, but one does not anticipate grand theft auto when one is trying to free up driveway space. So its rental cars for 20 days, or until the Firefly is recovered. Apparently your car is not truly gone until 20 days have elapsed.

So, in short, this has become both a costly event, and a major pain in the ass.

The true tragedy is the loss of my coveted Virgin of Guadalupe dashboard ornament that has graced the dashboard of both the Firefly and my Volvo. Why I had not the sense to place it in my truck (I’m driving around without holy protection). On the upside, I did transfer over my “God Forgive George” memorial ribbon magnet.

So if you see the meth-head who stole the Firefly, punch him in the nose, and grab my virgin.

AMBER ALERT

1991 FIREFLY

RED, 2 DOOR, WITH CUSTOM ZEN DESIGN SEAT COVERS, PLASTIC VIRGIN STATUE ON DASHBOARD, LAO STICKER ON REAR WINDOW.