Turning into a seriously bad weekend....

....ordinarily this would be the time where I would put up something amusing about Fringe. and The Greatest Show on Earth. But:

1) So far since Friday night we've had at least 9 inches of rain and counting; we need the rain, but not this much at once: the side yard is flooding and I have to watch the library/garage for leaks. (This also ended up cancelling my plans to attend the Winter Garden Music Fest this weekend -- I headed there Friday night and ended up getting stuck under the awning with the various people and the balloons for hours before inching myself back through the rain on my scooter, not to mention the "what happened to the trike? Were you hit my another truck?" asking for explanations in the rain, since I rarely use the scooter to go downtown.)

2) My brother's car broke down completely yesterday and he may need to replace it.

3) A friend's health just took a very bad turn for the worse and I feel like shit and absolutely helpless. I need a goddamn wand to eliminate cancer.

4) And to cap everything our small house in the back was just robbed, and, which makes me even more pissed off, totally trashed. It's bad enough that you stole our stuff, but did you have to trash the place?

We're still trying to figure out exactly what they got. I'm furious at myself -- I meant to go back and organize stuff back there and just haven't gotten around to it, but we are certain that they took my brother's guns, power tools and a few other things, including some of my junk jewelry that really wasn't worth stealing. Otherwise, we're fine - and nothing from the main house, where we keep most of the valuable stuff, was taken.

So I think we can safely describe this as a bad weekend.

Burglary, part two

When we first moved here we put a lot of stuff in the back house, intending to get to it in a couple of weeks. A couple of weeks stretched into months, then into years....but in the last couple of weeks we have gotten back there and started cleaning, organizing, opening boxes and so on. My brother was there last night, moving stuff, then he carefully locked up the back house, came in, watched The Greatest Show on Earth, and headed to bed.

I didn't notice anything when I first got up this morning -- nor did he -- but by 10:30 am, the door to the back house was open and flopping in the rain, so my brother headed out there, then came back in and asked if I'd gone in there today. I'd spent the morning on the couch trying desperately to get this story done, so, no. He called the cops -- and then discovered that the thieves had taken his guns.

According to the cop, that shifts this from just regular burglary into grand theft and armed robbery, both felonies.

My brother also discovered that the thieves had left behind a knife -- the knife they used to cut open many of the boxes and completely trash the place. With that, and the hopes that the thieves will try to sell the guns at a pawnshop, which will trigger an alert from their serial numbers, I have some small hopes that these thieves will be caught.

ETA: What makes this a bit odd is that the thieves decided to rob us during a heavy rain squall -- but they must have guessed, correctly, that no one would be out in the back, watching.