I Had Planned to Buy Riunite

On Sunday, in celebration of her birthday, Dana had a BBQ fiesta, the unofficial theme of which was "foodstuffs from 1975" (the year of her birth). The festivities got underway in the early afternoon, but Josh and I had to teach a class until 5, so I planned to head over as soon as we were done.

Driving to Joshy's seemed like a good idea that morning. I'd brought my coffee maker to his house the previous day and didn't feel like schlepping it to Dana's on foot or by Muni on Sunday evening, nor did I feel like going out of the way to bring the thing home before heading into the Mission. I also figured that driving would get me to D's more speedily than taking the bus, and had the grand idea to stop at Safeway en route to pick up a bottle of Riunite (on ice, natch) so that I might be thematically proper.

I parked the car on 8th Street at Natoma around 9, putting my toolkit in the trunk and triple-checking all of the locks before I walked away from it for the next eight hours. It was Sunday. The daylight was broad. There was nothing visible in my luxurious 1993 Toyota Corolla save for a bag of plastic bags (destined for the recycling bin at Safeway), an empty printer cartridge (on its way to Office Depot), a packing tape dispenser, my garage door opener, my mileage log, and the piece of plastic that fits into my cassette deck (yes) and allows me to play my iPod through my stereo.

Evidently, this bounty was temptation enough for the denizens of 8th Street. Around 5, as Josh and I left his house and walked toward my car, we saw one of our students heading toward us. "Did you get our messages?" she asked. We said we hadn't, and she replied that she and another student had called both of us from around the corner as they came upon my car (bearing magnetic signs on the doors with my business name, which is how they knew it was mine) and noted the glittering pile of glass on the sidewalk next to it.

Adios, driver's side window. Hello, giant mess. Loot scored by whatever crackhead or tweaker or just plain asshole broke into and ransacked my car: garage door opener, mileage log, tape dispenser, bag of bags, empty ink cartridge. No doubt you're having a field day with those highly valuable things.

In the end--after driving to the carwash to vacuum up as much glass as possible, after calling Glass Pro to arrange an appointment the following day, after sitting in front of my garage for a while and waiting in vain for one of the other car owners who parks there to come or go--I did make it to Dana's. In fact, she and Brad were good enough to let me park my window-less car in their garage that night. I was late in arriving--even later than anticipated--but things were still swinging when I got there, and there was still plenty of Champagne Jell-o mold to enjoy.

But I'm sorry I showed up empty-handed. D, your next bottle of "wine product with natural flavors" is on me.