Crawling slowly down the path

[hrj]

The number of active things I can do on the burglary-recovery front is winding down. I've sent off for all the relevant replacement documents (except for the passport, which I need the duplicate birth certificate for); reported the hazard to all the relevant financial and credit-reporting institutions; started things in motion with the insurance company. Today I made the rounds of the used-jewelry dealers at the local flea market and handed out flyers with the description of my stuff and pictures of highly similar pieces from on-line. I have one more local used computer store to hit tomorrow when it's open. Also a list of the nearest pawn shops. Also today I reconstructed my financial spreadsheets from the most recent backup and the hard copies. (I lose the most recent details of cash expenditures, but no biggie.) Now I just need to crawl out of my depression. It's easy to see how people can fall into really hard-nosed attitudes about "law and order". There's a part of my brain that keeps up a constant rant about "why do I work hard at an honest job when all my nice things just get taken away from me by lazy scum and what am I paying taxes for when the police don't do squat except take reports?" Yeah, easy to see which direction the slippery slope goes. So instead I just settle for being depressed and daydreaming about communities where you don't get blamed for it being your fault you got robbed because you hadn't made your house sufficiently fortress-like.

Yesterday at Collegium was nice. The socks classes seemed to go off well -- a bunch of people went away with medieval socks patterns (and a process for drafting other styles), and the A&S judging workshop got exactly the mix of people I was hoping for and seemed to be useful. Afterwards I went out with a dinner party to celebrate the 30th birthday of vittoriosa's sweetie and enjoyed excellent food and stimulating conversation. I like stimulating conversation. Other people can have the loud music, the excessive alcohol consumption, the fluffy silliness. Give me a handful of folks who are as eager to listen as to talk and who have something intelligent to say on any subject at hand. Now that's a party.