Well, shit.

I should have a nice breakfast inside me, now, and Heather and I should be sitting in the Grand Lake Theater, about a half an hour into our viewing of The Return of the King, something I've been looking forward to all week. We got up early, planning to go have breakfast and catch one of the before-noon matinees. We were out the door by ten-thirty, time enough to get a bagel at least before the show. We headed toward our car, which we'd parked right across from our house when we got home last night.

We headed toward our car, which was not there.

We wandered up and down the street, furrowing our brows -- did we forget where we parked? No. No, we didn't.

Our car was stolen.

First, we tried to convince ourselves it had been towed, but there was no reason it would have been. So we tore apart several boxes of as-yet-unpacked files, until we finally found a piece of paper that had the license place number and VIN. We called the police, and they sent someone (who arrived within half an hour), a genial officer who took our information. He told us to be hopeful -- if we had a Honda or Accord there'd be little chance of us getting it back, because those types of cars are regularly stolen and stripped for parts around here, but he's never heard of people doing that to a Saturn. Given that we have a ten-year-old car with a chunk of driver-side door missing, it's unlikely that someone stole it to re-sell it. Probably a joyride, then, or someone stealing it to use in a crime, and it'll likely turn up. Wish I hadn't filled the gas tank two days ago. Wish we weren't so haphazard about using The Club (we didn't use it last night, obviously), since that discourages casual theft. Wish we'd gotten better insurance (we have bare-minimum insurance, which is really all we could afford). I suppose we'll be better about those latter two things in the future. So, for now, we wait, and see how badly this will impact our lives. Maybe they'll find it soon. At least it's a weekend, so I don't immediately have to deal with how to get to work. Heather's been great, making the phone calls and dealing with people, generally being on-top of things.

Man, what a year. I was nominated for a Nebula award. I was mugged. My first short story collection was published. My car was stolen. Talk about living in interesting times...

Hey, Barth, when you said I was moving into shrapnel range of my Saturn return, is this what you were talking about? Because I sure hope my Saturn return is imminent...