No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

Oye. Great weekend with a bummer ending. Let me elaborate:

Friday morning: Ran 13 miles with a new friend who is training for her first marathon. Had to leave at 6:30 am to make it to work on time. It was good to get a long run in, but not what I was expecting to do Friday morning. Glad to help a new runner out though.

Friday evening: Hosted a puppy play party with new friends from Trent's program and our puppy class friends Matt and Alyse. Nice evening watching the pups getting exhausted and eating snacks. Then helped Alyse tune up her bike.

Saturday morning: At 5am a friend showed up with her sister. This is a girl who I met when I was a "Future World Leader" at a Presidential Classroom trip to DC in high school. She was one of 4 other Americans who got assigned to the Sri Lankian cohort. We haven't seen each other since, but have kept in touch via email and such. She was driving down from New Jersey with her sister to meet her brother who was driving up from Jacksonville, Florida, with her sister's kids who had been spending the summer with him. They needed a place to meet halfway and she asked if they could rendezvous at our house. They slept in while Trent and I snuck out for farmer's market and breakfast at Neal's bakery. Trent went to the boat house and I worked in the yard (got my fall garden planted!) to let them rest. They finally woke up around 11:30am and we had a nice breakfast of goodies from farmer's market and lots of chatting to catch up. Fun to hear about my Sri Lankian friends doing amazing things in the world. Her brother arrived around 1pm and we hosted an impromptu family reunion. I love things like this and had a blast meeting all the cute kiddies and taking lots of pictures. They left around 2pm.

Saturday afternoon: Late lunch with Deirdre and Trent at our favorite mexican restaurant and then a venture out to the newly opened Nordstrom's Rack. It was craziness... wayy too busy to be functional but I did score some new Calvin Klein bras for a great price, and ran into a professor from my department while I was carrying around these bras. Classy. Quick visit to Cost Plus and then home. By then I was socialized out, but my attempts to crash on the sofa in my jammies was distrupted by our friend who just got married and used our mailing address to have presents delivered who came by to pick up the piles and piles of packages. Then neighbors who've been admiring Pilot (he is turning into a very handsome dog) came over with their two dogs to play, so we sat and chatted with them. Finally, I came inside, got into jammies, and Trent and I watched tons of Mad Men episodes while sipping port. Lovely.

Sunday morning: Up and packed to head to Thomas's lake house. Stopped by Whole Foods on the way out of town, but had to make an emergency stop on Franklin St when we spotted a runner laying on the sidewalk. I nearly got run over myself trying to run and help. She was having a seizure so we called 911 (so many people just drove by, boo Chapel Hill) and stayed with her until she came around. She was so confused and disoriented, but apparently was a freshman. We stayed until the EMTs showed up and she was much more coherent. Poor thing. Quick trip to Whole Foods and hit the road. Scary. Wear a Road-ID!

Sunday afternoon: Got up to the lake to meet up with Thomas, another crew boy Chris, Thomas's co-worker Alecia and her two roommates Darcy and Emily. We cooked up our Whole Food goodies, ate lunch, lounged on the dock in the sun, napping and jumping in the lake. Perfection. Went out in the boat and Trent and I were SO much better at water-skiing. I love it!! Though man, I am still soooo sore. It is hard work. More napping, and epic trip with the four girls in the the tube behind the boat with some pretty stellar falling out, more water-skiing and then Thomas's parents came and we all cooked dinner and made homemade ice cream. Perfect end to summer. Trent and I left so we could get home to Pilot but everyone else spent the night.

Monday morning: Great sleep in. Pretty lazy day. Lots of laundry (dried on the line, the weather is gorgeous), gardening, and cleaning. Finally rallied to go to lab and grocery shopping to host Amanda's parents for dinner. Got SO many groceries and was thrilled to cook. Even made "No Knead" bread so we'd have fresh bread with dinner. Trent went out on a mellow bike ride with his classmates about 40 minutes before I got home. He left at 5pm, I got home at 5:40. At 5:30, somebody broke into our house...

I came home and brought in groceries, let Pilot out of his crate, all the usual, before I noticed our desktop computer was missing. I called Trent, occasionally he uses it for work, but nope. I immediately called 911 and then proceeded to panic when they asked if I was sure the people had left (I wasn't). Hung out in the yard until the officer showed up. He was SO lame. Pretty much blamed us, didn't notice the crowbar marks on the window sills, reprimanded me for letting Pilot out and walking in the house. Boo. Trent got home right as he was leaving. In the end, they took our desktop, Trent's brand new netbook (with his notes for school), his new backpack from New Hampshire with a new textbook, his wallet, and our jar of loose change. SO SO SO lame. They rifled around in my drawers and jewelry box but didn't take anything. We had to cancel dinner (bummer) and spent the evening canceling credit cards and being bummed out. Stephen and Amanda sweetly brought over dessert and chatted. Lesson? Be careful, write down serial numbers for electronics, back up your music and pictures, and apparently don't be a good Samaritan.

Enough feeling sorry for ourselves... we are fine, I am very happy that I didn't come home 10 minutes earlier and interrupt them, nothing sentimental was taken and we have good home owner's insurance. We will be fine. We are still so fortunate. And we just spoke with a detective who is working on our case. He said that there has been a recent spree of this really quick, electronics thievery, and they have some leads. And Trent had a remote desktop program on so if they turn on the computer and there is internet around, it will automatically update with the IP address.. so hopefully we can help catch this bad folks. Fingers crossed!