Monday, July 20, 2009

Optimist

I just looked over the past few posts, and noticed the general trend of pessimism and negativity that they contain. I don't want to give the wrong impression.
I love my life. Man, it's pretty awesome. I've got to admit that when I look over the lives of the people I know and surround myself with, I wouldn't trade places with any of them. That's not to say that their lives are in any way worse than mine - I'm sure that in their eyes they're right where they want to be - or in some cases are at least trying to get their lives to that stage - but my point is that overall, which is really what counts, I'm happy.
I've been really lax on updating this thing lately, mostly because I only half care, but I don't think its worth writing bullshit if I don't actually feel like I have something to say. So if you're still RSSing this, or reading it some other way, then thanks! In addition to my disinterest in writing, I've been in the middle of moving for the last few weeks. Bret (my roommate from my previous apartment) and I found a house about 10 mins away from our old apartment that is so much nicer than the place we were at that we couldn't allow ourselves to not live there. We'll be joined by Zachary Tartell of Watertown, NY, who is a good friend of ours who is looking to take up the moderate societal upgrade that Syracuse promises. I'll be posting some pics of the new crib at some point in the near future, once we get our stuff all moved in.
Outside the move, not much has been going on outside the normal day-to-day. Unless you count the break-in, I suppose. For those of you not reading the Magic Blog (how many of you are there?), the story is this:
A few Tuesday nights ago, sometime between 11pm and 7am Wednesday, my car was broken into. The thief stole my iPod and a backpack which contained two Magic decks which were chock full of expensive and irreplaceable cards. I'm out approximately $2000. I'm not excited about it, and as it turns out, it's not covered by either my car nor my renter's insurance. This is YEARS of investment and trading and tournament wins and all kinds of work, gone in an instant.

After a week of letting the town's card dealers know, checking eBay constantly, getting the car fixed, buying a new iPod, etc., I get a phone call from a friend who says he's going to make my day. He forwards me a private message on mtgTheSource.com (the website I admin) which says:

Thru a google search I found the post that says "Bret Weed is coming" to some event about a Boston Roll call....I live in Syracuse and found a bag under my front porch with some merchandise in it, for playing wizard games...in one of the pockets I found a card with Bret Weed on it...the bag has broken glass in it, so I am assuming his car was broken into and this was taken...i would like to return it to him... my # is 315-XXX-XXXX...

Thank you
Amy

As I said above, Bret is my roommate. I was borrowing his bag at the time. This woman went out of her way to track down the owner of the bag she found, and managed to find them on a random website - which I happen to be intricately involved with. I called her, and she lived less than a block from my old apartment. She had the bag, with all the cards in it. The assumption is, the thief stole the bag, looked in it, saw nothing of value (to them), and ditched it on the way to wherever they were going. Since this thief threw it under a porch, it was protected from the rain, which persisted the entire week I was missing the cards. I was obviously floored at the generosity and integrity of this benefactor, and made sure to give her some token of my gratitude - although anything I could have given her wouldn't have been enough.

I hope the thief enjoys his new iPod, or the 20 bucks he'll get for it. I'm glad, for my own sake, that he was too stupid to realize that the real value was in the backpack he threw away.

I've often told my closest friends that while some people always claim "My life sucks," I can't say the same - my life doesn't suck, it's just a little annoying sometimes. This is a perfect example. Should my cards have disappeared forever, it would have SUCKED. As it stands, it sucked for a week, and then became altogether better. So I've got that going for me. Which is nice.