I've got good news...

and I've got bad news. Which would you like first? Good news? Okay, then.

The shiny.
It's gadget-central around here these days. My birthday was a couple of weeks ago, and Chris got me this pretty new toy. It's so cute and shiny, I can't decide whether to snuggle it or lick it. I'm still in the process of ripping hundreds of CDs, so I haven't put anything on my as-yet unnamed player, but soon, I will be rocking out on the bus and/or pretending not to hear the people trying to talk to me. We started the process of ripping CDs back in September when I got Chris an iPod for his birthday, but we didn't get very far because our ghetto laptop is so damn slow. So! We also got a new laptop over the weekend! Okay, so we didn't get it just to rip CDs faster. I wasn't kidding when I called it ghetto. Carlo has popped off a good four or five keys, it shuts down for no apparent reason sometimes (hello scary blue screen!), and the track pad driver is all wonky so the cursor sometimes just floats around the screen, regardless of my threats. Oh, and there was also that incident, on the eve of our wedding, when I tripped over its power cord and knocked it to the ground--face down. It hasn't been the same since. (My sister is good in bad situations though: seeing the look of impending insanity on my face, she quickly scooped up the computer and whisked it away to fix it, while shooing me off to bed.) In short, we've been needing a new computer for awhile now and yay for CompUSA sales.

(Pictures of shiny, lickable electronics to come. The new laptop has a 6-in-1 digital media reader, but naturally, it doesn't take compact flash cards. Naturally.)

Okay, ready for the bad?

The shitty.
Our car was stolen, some time between 2:30 p.m. on Sunday and 7:45 a.m. today. Wait, you say, wasn't it stolen just last Thanksgiving? Why yes! It was! Making that twice in six months. Motherfuckers! Hopefully, we'll get it back again this time, preferably sans used hypodermic needles, please. The upside is that we didn't have anything of value in the car, aside from the new stereo we had installed after we got it back the last time. Oh, and a 25-lb. bag of the World's Best Cat Litter. Come to think of it, I am a little pissed about the kitty litter. That shit's not cheap!

This part may seem totally stupid (frankly, because it is), but I feel like this keeps happening to me. Both times the car was nicked, I was the last person to drive it. Both times, I parked it in seemingly safe spots (within a block from our house in our family-friendly neighborhood) and locked the doors. Chris, on the other hand, can lock his keys in the car--in the freakin' ignition, no less!--walk away from the car blissfully unaware, leave it sitting there ALL DAMN DAY, blocks away from his office, and come back to it in the evening to find it sitting there unmolested. The worst he suffered was having to meekly call me to say, "Hi, I'm stupid," and my eye-rolling derision. Why??