OK, fine. We're using the silver!

The story of our nomadism continues, though I hope this somewhat traumatic chapter will be the final one (with no need for any sort of epilogue).

As you'll recall from chapter 6, almost immediately after storing almost all our worldy possessions inside a tin box in the desert of California, said 'storage unit' was broken into (we still think it might have been an inside job). Given that we were thousands of miles away in the valleys of central Pennsylvani, we had to assess the damage with only the aid of a blurry polaroid taken of the front of the unit. We surmised that the thieves had taken almost all the valuable items: all our tools; all our speakers, television and audio/video equipment; all our CDs; my golf clubs; and a few other big ticket items. We filed an insurance claim based on these presumptions and were very pleased when they wrote us a check (for a quite distinct outcome, see chapter 3 in which the movers destroy most of our stuff and fail to issue a fair reimbursement). And then, we tried to put the disturbance of the break-in behind us.

Zip forward more than 2 and 1/2 years to this Tuesday, when our remaining belongings from storage - after numerous items had been sold or given away, thanks to coordination by Steve and Kim on the ground in CA - arrived at our house. Our books, key pieces of furniture, our beloved rugs, all here safe and sound! However, only two of the expected 4 kitchen boxes showed up. And sure enough, we are missing: all our knives, given to us over the course of 5 years by my parents; all of our coffee mugs, a collection dating back to college; all of our good silverware, given to us by Rebecca's mom long ago; all of our good pots and pans, given to Rebecca by me the xmas before storing them; and a whole lot of other things that we can't even remember.

Ironically, while the thieves took things like our silverware and our mugs that are of worth only to us, they left us with the (almost) full set of 1936 Pennsylvania silver, including its gorgeous felt-lined mohagony box (also a lovely gift from Rebecca's mom). This, of course, would have been very pawn-able, and not something we were likely to need on a day-to-day basis.

But we're taking it as a sign, and we refuse to continue using the 'camping' utensils that we've suffered for the past 2 years. So to hell with it: we're using the silver! Any guests to our houehold can therefore expect fine dining utensils.

They can also expect 'parting gifts': we have almost a dozen very small US appliances (mostly desk lamps) that won't do us much good connected to 230v. So come visit us and take one home!