Stolen Again!

When I got home from school today I checked my email and saw that I had a message from my Ale. In the subject line it said, "News from Murphy". Hmm....A strange but intriguing title. After reading it, I understood that he was referring to Murphy's Law. He said that as he got off the tube, he walked to the parking lot only to find that his "Cinquecento" had been stolen, AGAIN! His cinquecento was stolen last year too. He had to spend a few hours at the Carabinieri's making a report. Luckily there wasn't much gas in it the first time, and the perps ran out of gas in Monza, so they were able to recover the car. Now, another hour lost at the Carabinieri's office making a report. I hope they find it soon. Before he comes here next week would be nice. My poor Ale has had so much bad luck with his little car in the last 6 months. It also got hit while it was parked and of course, no note left. Then his sister got into an accident while driving it (she was OK, thank goodness). Those of you in Italy know that insurance and taxes in Italy for cars is so expensive, even for a little Fiat. He's so frustrated. He even mentioned the word "voodoo" in his message. I felt so bad after reading it. I wanted to call him, but I figured he probably didn't want to talk about it, so I figured I'd just message him back.

A few weeks ago my car got broken into. It's really rare that it happens in my neighborhood, but I left my backpack in my car and I guess it was just too tempting for someone not to pass up. It was completely useless to them because all it had in it was my schoolwork and some school supplies. Nothing of real value to a thief. It was of value to me though because I had to do all that school work all over again.....ARGH!! Thankfully, they didn't take any of my school books which were on the back seat because those are expensive to replace. I did have my TomTom GPS locked in the glove box, but they didn't bother to try to open that up, thank goodness! I keep it in the apartment now. I did have to swallow the cost of replacing the window they broke because my insurance deductible is $500 and the window wasn't quite that much but it did set me back $267. It may not sound like much but I'm a student now, living on a student's budget so it did sting a little bit. Street parking sucks! The police report was all done over the phone. The officer told me that there wasn't much they could do, which didn't surprise me. He told me to go looking in the dumpsters in my neighborhood because the thieves usually dump the stuff after taking what they want. Well, as terrible as I felt that my backpack was stolen, I wasn't about to stick my head in any dumpsters looking for it. Like I said, there really wasn't anything valuable in it, so I cut my losses.

It's terrible that we have such callous people in this world, but unfortunately, that's life. It's hard not to feel worried about something like that happening again. I try to think positively and hope for the best. But to have your car stolen not once but twice has got to be discouraging.

Jessica in Rome: if you are reading this, there seems to be something wrong with your site. Unless it's just me (but I've tried on two different computers), whenever I try to log on to your site, it gives me an error prompt. It says Internet explorer can not open the site. Operation aborted. It's just happened in the last week. Please let me know if it's just on my end. Thanks!