4 April 2001 | In Passing...

4 April 2001

Submitted by eve on Wed, 04/04/2001 - 2:39pm. Beautiful

"Oh my god."
--Me, on learning that my bag had been found.

Whoa.
I keep losing and regaining my faith in humanity so quickly that my head is spinning.
I got home from my midterm this morning and there was a message saying that a grocery store had called, they'd found my bag...
...with everything still in it.
I am shocked. I am amazed. I am most of all baffled.
Wallet. Cash. Credit cards. ID. Palm Pilot. Palm Pilot GoType keyboard. Camera. Notebook. Neuro book. Keys. Checkbook. Paycheck stubs. Phone bill.
I am missing a tin of Penguin Mints, and a lipstick.
I can deal.
Wow.
This all just happened. I'm still in shock. Pardon the short sentences.
Last night what I realized I was the most upset about was the class notes, and lost In Passing entries, both of which were on the palm. Important lesson learned; backup my palm more frequently.

There are a bunch of people I need to thank for coming to my rescue in one form or another when I was panicking.
Thank you to my friends and dear ones who calmed me down, sorted things out, loaned me money, loaned me neuro notes, drove me to get said neuro notes, gave me hugs, and took me out for dinner and a pint.
Thank you to the waitress at Raleigh's, for not carding.
Thank you to the friend who lives in my building and got the maintenance manager to change my locks.
Thank you to my Neurology professor, for being kind and understanding and offering to weight my final so that this midterm counted less, since I couldn't study much.
Thank you to the guy who believed my story and made me a new key for my place when I couldn't get in, before the locks were changed.
Thank you to the grocery store employee who found my purse, and to the manager who called every person listed in California who had any variation of my name, trying to find me.
And thank you, all of you, for your sympathy and comiseration and support, both here and through email. Special thanks to the guy who offered me his spare palm pilot. I might have been robbed by a stranger yesterday, but today it was the kindness of people I've never met that helped me along.

Oh yeah, one more thing.
*Psssst!*
Hey, universe! I want all this drama to stop happening to me. I'm ready for a period of quiet existance. No more drama with work, family, friends, love, or worldly possessions.
Thanks, I'd appreciate it.

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Posted by Anne Onymous on Sat, 02/16/2002 - 9:34am.

Archived comment by @Aesop:
i lose my mind regularly, and some dang fool keeps returning it.... and nothing is missing.
tis a greater shame that there aint nothing there to steal....

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Posted by Anne Onymous on Wed, 09/19/2001 - 2:59pm.

Archived comment by trachea:
What a great story (about your bag being returned unpilfered).
I have lived in Chicago on and off for 18 years during which I lost my wallet 3 times. Each time, people found my wallet, tracked me down and returned it with cash & credit cards, everything, still inside. The last time my wallet was found by a Hispanic family who spoke virtually no English, and even though my info in the wallet didn't have my current address & phone #, they somehow tracked me down. Guess what I'm saying is that there are wonderful, caring people everywhere, even in big cities. To all my wallet finders out there, I think of you to this day...God bless you.

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Posted by Anne Onymous on Fri, 06/29/2001 - 11:35pm.

Archived comment by MdmeKitty:
Elizabeth, Shame for calling penguins JUST MINTS. Penguin mints, as we all should know are a gift from the goddess to help us function as better people(or get really hyper when we start popping them one after the other so our friends can laugh at us)

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Posted by Anne Onymous on Tue, 05/15/2001 - 1:30pm.

Archived comment by Sheep:
I wonder if people purposely gank bags and steal the most random things out of them just for fun.

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Posted by Anne Onymous on Wed, 04/25/2001 - 2:41pm.

Archived comment by Lethran:
If you lived in the Northwest, you'd always get your purse back intact. No only has mine always come back with everthing in it, I had a friend who still had $180.00 in it when hers came back.

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Posted by Anne Onymous on Fri, 04/06/2001 - 3:06pm.

Archived comment by Violet Rose:
Once, I was at a dance, and I found a 20 bill lying on the ground. I gave it to the lostand found people, and walked off.

30 seconds later, I realised it was my own 20 dollors I had found.

Wierd.

(I dont think the lady really beleived me when I walked back and said it was my money.)

Glad you found all of your things! (shame about the mints, though!)

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Posted by Anne Onymous on Fri, 04/06/2001 - 2:24pm.

Archived comment by azrynne:
once, in the mid 80's, when i was a kid, i left my purse in a mall. i never got it back, but i soonafter got another purse almost identical to it. since it was the 80's, it was a stonewashed denim, crescent shaped bag. who can tell them apart?

humanity sometimes will surprise you. once i had my purse stolen and returned, the only thing missing being my favorite Keroppi pen. weird.

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Posted by Anne Onymous on Fri, 04/06/2001 - 12:42pm.

Archived comment by Stacey:
Yay! You lucky duck! I left my wallet at the local taco shop last week and no one turned it in. Oh well. I do this so often it's (almost) no big deal. Maybe I was a thief in a past life or something.

But you, Eve, are one happy camper right now, I'll bet!

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Posted by Anne Onymous on Fri, 04/06/2001 - 9:59am.

Archived comment by Jon:
"You can't have my ice cream bar!"

Cool points.

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Posted by Anne Onymous on Fri, 04/06/2001 - 8:38am.

Archived comment by NN:
Thank goodness!

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Posted by Anne Onymous on Thu, 04/05/2001 - 12:59pm.

Archived comment by Robyn:
Eve - it's so great that your stuff was found and nearly intact! I once left my wallet in a bathroom at the SF airport - including about $200 in cash (and I don't normally carry anything close to that). Someone turned it in - with all the cash still there. Definitely a 'faith in humanity restoring' event. On the other hand, last year my car was broken into twice in a period of about 2 weeks. The first time, a window was smashed but nothing was taken (well, there was nothing to take). I didn't have the window yet repaired by the time the second break-in occurred, I just had a piece of plexiglas taped on. Unfortunately, the person who broke in didn't realize they could have just popped out the plexiglas - instead they slashed the top (convertible) doing over $1000 in damage, stole the body of my CD player for some unknown, really annoying reason (I had the face) and walked off with the CD case I'd stupidly left under the seat (with about 25 of my favorite CDs in it). This was also during the rainy season. It totally sucked.

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Posted by Anne Onymous on Thu, 04/05/2001 - 9:46am.

Archived comment by melis:
eve- I am glad that your things are back, I dont
know you, but I dont want you to be sad!

I have lost my keys twice, only to have them
show up in my housemate's purse. Once I
even distinctly remember throwing them into
my purse as I got out of the car. We think there
is a wormhole.

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Posted by Anne Onymous on Thu, 04/05/2001 - 9:34am.

Archived comment by Elizabeth:
Mints & a lipstick!?! Good lord! What people have been reduced to stealing! Congratulations, Eve! So happy to hear almost everything was intact. :)

I had someone break into my car and steal the factory CD player. Keep in mind that it was a Kia! They did over $2000 dollars worth of damage. There was nothing else in the car. It was 2 weeks old.

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Posted by Anne Onymous on Thu, 04/05/2001 - 8:36am.

Archived comment by Milo:
Must say though, snaggin' a woman's penguin mints is low.

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Posted by Anne Onymous on Thu, 04/05/2001 - 8:34am.

Archived comment by Milo:
Good for you Eve. So glad to hear your stuff is back. I once left my bag, with my wallet, credit cards, etc. in a McDonalds in northern Florida, on a road trip to central FL. Realized I had done so, 200 miles down the road. Called the McD's, they had found it, and held it in the safe for the 3 days I was there (swimming with manatee, very cool). When I got it back, everything was there, minus the $4 cash I was carrying and a $50-ish Casio digital organizer thingy. What really annoyed me was the data lost with the organizer. I didn't have it backed up in any way. I lost numbers and email addys, and have lost track of those people because of it.

I'm more careful with my stuff now, and my Palm is backed up weekly.

Just to make this even more rambling, I had my car broken into recently, and after smashing a $300 window (grrrr) they stole an $80 CD player, and left my $90 Oakleys. HA! Dumbasses.

Best of luck with the universe. ;)

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Posted by Anne Onymous on Thu, 04/05/2001 - 8:27am.

Archived comment by MauriceB:
Love is the only game in town and everyone gets what they give.

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Posted by Anne Onymous on Thu, 04/05/2001 - 8:18am.

Archived comment by Jon:
Hooray! Eve's stuff and faith in humanity is restored!

But... don't talk to the Universe. It starts talking back to you. Man, is it ever boring. I guess if I were 8-12 billion years old, I'd be boring too. All the interesting topics get used up.

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Posted by Anne Onymous on Thu, 04/05/2001 - 8:05am.

Archived comment by Arlene:
Yay for Eve.

I once left my purse at the busstop. Fortunately it was quite distinctive & a friend of mine saw it. She returned it to me before I'd even realised that I didn't have it. I also once left my purse in a parking lot at the beach. Then drove back over this bitchin' bridge in the _pouring_ rain to get it back before it got snagged.

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Posted by Anne Onymous on Thu, 04/05/2001 - 7:25am.

Archived comment by Joel_ofthe_North:
Congratulations, Eve!!

I, like so many others I've read here, was so heartened to hear of the return of your things,nearly in their entirety!! Truly a rare occurance indeed - I'm happy the fates saw fit to grace you with such 'good luck'....

This is SUCH a good site, as I'm sure ALL who visit, even on a semi-regular basis, would agree.

It would be cool sometime to have an 'InPassing Party' at some hotel....where all of we 'regulars' could actually.. nevermind.. I'm rambling now...

It has been a really LONG Winter up here....

More coffee now....

Anyway, CONGRATS again Eve!!!!

J_ot_N

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Posted by Anne Onymous on Thu, 04/05/2001 - 7:16am.

Archived comment by mel:
ooooh, you are brave! i don't know if i could cope with losing my penguin mints. dem are god, it's true.

i'm glad you got your stuff back though!! wheeee!

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Posted by Anne Onymous on Thu, 04/05/2001 - 2:39am.

Archived comment by Martha:
Glad you got your stuff back, and that your support group held you up when you needed it!
Two comments: don't ask the universe for a totally quiet life, you might get it. Personally I always ask for at least some excitement but not so much I wind up not sleeping or talking and gestulating to myself in public.
Second; I too had another dimension missing object in my house. It was gone over ten years. I searched everywhere, even in the rafters in the basement... though why I thought that a pearl necklace could have been in the rafters in the basement I cannot now imagine. (It was a fairly costly necklace that I made my husband buy me, fairly early in our marriage, when I was so angry that I thought if he didn't make some gesture that i would have to divorce him. Even if I made him make it. I divorced him 22 years later, but that's another story and unrelated). Then, one day, I was cleaning and it was just sitting on a shelf where I know I had looked. Hey, I was reduced to Linda Goodman's 'find-me' chants and everything!

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Posted by Anne Onymous on Thu, 04/05/2001 - 2:34am.

Archived comment by junk:
whee, your stuff are back!

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Posted by Anne Onymous on Wed, 04/04/2001 - 10:38pm.

Archived comment by dave:
Someone's comment that the thief must have been weird reminded me of a time when my car was stolen. The car was found (undamaged thank god) minus petrol (no big surprise there) but less my sunglasses and a chocolate bar.

Oh well, small mercies and all that.

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Posted by Anne Onymous on Wed, 04/04/2001 - 10:34pm.

Archived comment by Hoss:
.kcuF

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Posted by Anne Onymous on Wed, 04/04/2001 - 10:33pm.

Archived comment by Victor Kim:
Eve, O wonderful webmistress, if you were to loose anything for me to find, I would hoard it like pure gold and make a shrine of it in my basement, complete with candles, pictures, and obsessive poems to compliment anything and all things associated with you.
Alas my love, i must lay low for a short while. Bausch & Lomb is out to kill me.

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Posted by Anne Onymous on Wed, 04/04/2001 - 9:11pm.

Archived comment by Marlon:
my faith in humanity was restored when i lost my wallet in a grocery store in MI and had it returned via u.s. mail to my home in PA with my measley five bucks still in it we arent all that bad

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Posted by Anne Onymous on Wed, 04/04/2001 - 9:04pm.

Archived comment by steff:
geez, mike. i thought *I* was a tease. that man of
mine recently (last week) lost his wallet inside
the house. i swear it went to another dimension.
we KNEW it was in the house, we have no kids, the
house was spotless... until we tore the hell out
of it looking for the wallet. and then we did it
again. and then we went to bed, woke up, did it
AGAIN... no wallet. we finally found it, sitting
there perfectly innocently, in a room where he's
sure he didn't have it, but where we HAD, indeed,
looked before several times without finding it.
i'm talking cutting through that funny canvas
protective barrier on the bottom of chairs to see
if it somehow 'fell' in them in such a way that it
got stuck inside. we looked that hard. and poof,
it got bored and decided to come back. it was lost
for 5 1/2 days with both of us searching for it
the whole time. weird. i must say that i, who have
little faith in humanity in general, would have
returned your purse with everything in it,
although the mints and the lipstick would have
been tempting - but i have my own. =) if i was the
person picking it up, most likely i wouldn't have
even looked inside it before taking it to customer
service, and if i was the person calling you from
the grocery store... well that's just
unprofessional to take things from a found purse.
oh, and i go around asking the universe for stuff
too, and the funny part is, i usually get it. but
be specific. a little drama is good... you maybe
wanna define drama more narrowly. just always
remember to say thank you! otherwise, the universe
gets perverse. ok, more so than usual.

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Posted by Anne Onymous on Wed, 04/04/2001 - 8:50pm.

Archived comment by Chris:
Hey, glad to hear it! I wish my professors were that cool... I had my computer crash the night before a big project was due. I had to take a zero. I escaped the semester with a B, though. I just thak god for programs such as Mathematica and Maple that helped me throught the difficult times of DiffEQ....

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Posted by Anne Onymous on Wed, 04/04/2001 - 6:09pm.

Archived comment by Mike:
Huh. Weird. Maybe some sort of variation on this? "How do Americans deal with sudden wallet loss?"

Whatever. Hooray for happy endings. (Unless it was really good lipstick.)

Oh, and never wish for peace and quiet. You inevitably get bored with it, wish for excitement, and get ten times as much trouble as you had before. I tried it as a kid, and we found this bag full of drug money...
...but that's another story. };^P

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Posted by Anne Onymous on Wed, 04/04/2001 - 6:02pm.

Archived comment by Adam:
Steve, speaking of China... does anyone else get the feeling that Dubya had (gasp) an idea?! "Hey... after taking the country to war and killing thousands of innocents, my dad had a great approval rating. I betcha I can kill lots of innocent people too, and make everyone (still alive) so happy that they'll forget all about Gore!" Creepy thought.

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Posted by Anne Onymous on Wed, 04/04/2001 - 4:42pm.

Archived comment by umrguy:
In the words of the immortal Homer (Simpson): "Woohoo!"

Glad to hear you got your things back, and all the other stuff sorted out. (On the plus side, now I don't have to think up that "whiz-bang" curse to lay on someone... which is good, because I was having no success anyway)

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Posted by Anne Onymous on Wed, 04/04/2001 - 4:39pm.

Archived comment by Ruby:
Glad to know you got your stuff back. Whoever took it is a strange, strange person.
Good to know there are still good people in this word :)

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Posted by Anne Onymous on Wed, 04/04/2001 - 3:28pm.

Archived comment by dave:
Wow, they nicked your penguin mints? The bastages!
I'd happily send you a tin of mine, but at the price I had to pay to get them here in Australia, I don't think I'm quite ready to be sending them back!

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Posted by Anne Onymous on Wed, 04/04/2001 - 3:11pm.

Archived comment by Steve - NYC:
Wow... getting ready to go home and dreading listening to the NPR news on China... feeling sucky about the world... just happened to check In Passing (via metacookie) and see how things were going for you... now I am feeling much better. Thanks for the update. Glad it all worked out.

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Posted by Anne Onymous on Wed, 04/04/2001 - 2:51pm.

Archived comment by Penny:
Woo-Hoo! Congrats! I'm so happy for you! Every once in a while the world doesn't suck.

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