Well, crap

I just got the kind of surprise that it's not nice to get on the day after Christmas.

The cable lock that held my scooter to the pole of the car port where I locked it has been cut.

My scooter is gone.

There's one note of hope. I was contacted by a police officer day before yesterday about a burglary on a nearby house. When I called him back to talk about it last night, I learned they had found a checkbook in my name in the garage of the house where the loot was, along with stuff that looked like it might have come from a vehicle. At the time, I had no idea where the checkbook would have come from, and said so—but I hadn't gone out to check my scooter at the time. Now that I know it's missing, I strongly suspect that checkbook was the one I kept in the underseat compartment of it.

Today when I call the scooter shop to get the VIN and model year, then call the police station to add it to the report, I'll see if and when I can get in touch with that particular police officer. If I'm really lucky, the scooter was there too.

Crap.

Scooted scooter

Not much progress. I talked to the scooter shop and got the VIN and year for the scooter and passed them on to the police, so they can put them in a nationwide stolen vehicle database. I talked to the police officer who had called me earlier, passed on a description of the scooter. The officer said that now that he thought about it, he recalled neighbors of the alleged burglars complaining about the noise of them riding a scooter around in their back yard. He was going to have the detective who was working the case get in touch with me about it.

I suppose I should face facts: I'm probably never going to see that scooter again. It's too easy to beat myself up over it, so I'll try not to do that. Maybe I should have thought that people would take advantage of the long Christmas holiday to snatch stuff, and had Sandy keep it in his garage for me or something, but it honestly never occurred to me it might be a problem. It was out of sight from the street, and the cable lock meant that a theft would have to be premeditated. It never occurred to me that someone might actually premeditate on me.

It's a really unpleasant feeling to be back to depending on the bus and bike (well, bike if it had air in the tires) to get to and from work. I keep remembering when I was riding the scooter, and unconsciously planning where I'll go next time I'm riding it, and then bring myself up with a jerk as I recall I don't have it anymore.

And how am I even going to get the money to finish paying it off without it? The scooter was what would make it possible for me to do studies that require returns—coming back to the clinic for a blood sample in the morning before work. Given that it's all the way across town from work, a motorized vehicle was the only reasonable way to go about it.

I hope the police turn something up. I still have moderate hopes. After all, they already have the people who did it, don't they? Maybe I'll learn more when I speak to the detective.

Anyway, I got one of my favorite comfort foods on the way home, and it's in the oven right now. Papa Murphy's pizza. Ironically, it's too big of a pizza to fit in the new oven, so I still don't know how that works. But I honestly couldn't let myself get a medium (the only size that would fit), because anything I wanted a medium of, the large was on sale for cheaper, and it didn't make sense to spend more money for less just to try out the new oven. But I had gotten my taste buds set on pizza, and I was right there anyway (having been dropped off from the bus there), so I might as well get something. So I settled on their Family Size (16") Murphy's Combination for $10, which will be enough for several meals for me, and it's baking in the oven now.

I have no idea when or if I'll be able to get to a store to get a frozen pizza of the right size.

Here's hoping the cops find my scooter soon.

Doctor Who Christmas Special: Voyage of the Damned

Spoiler-free review: Not bad, if a little formulaic. Of course, for one such as me, by this time I'd be thrilled at just about any new Who—and unlike some on my friends list, I rather like Tennant's Doctor.

( Spoilers here; don't read if you plan to see it, or at least if you care about such things )

The trailers for the coming season looked very interesting. I wonder what the odds are Tennant moves on at the end of this one?