Trousers, Firecrackers
Okay so you have two choices, the long summary of today or read what you can do to help me. IF YOU HAVE A LOT OF DVD’S OR SOFTWARE YOU DO NOT NEED OR JUST HAVE A WHOLE LOT OF MONEY YOU FEEL LIKE GIVING TO SOMEONE PLEASE READ EITHER THE SECOND LINK OR BOTH IF YOU HAVE THE TIME FOR THE WHOLE STORY:

First thing in the morning, which for us is like you know 10 in the morning, or possibly like 9:30 and Mom wakes us to go to the continental breakfast. In the end Winter doesn’t go but I wind up coming. I eat a pitiful breakfast and then go back up to the hotel for some surfing and some more sleeping.

At some point we call my cousin Ian who we are going to pick up from his dorm. We eventually make it over to his place to pick him up and then head to my other cousin (Ian’s sister, who is joining us on the trip and you will hear a lot from in the coming up weeks) Alice from her Vancouver friends Alex and Lisa’s house where she has been staying. The six of us headed off to a place where there was a Payless as well as being walking distance from a few other places we were planing on hitting. Thanks to the lovely map that Alice drew on a notebook to help us know where to go.

We parked in a little garage across the street where we could actually find parking. We walked over to where the Payless was and marveled at the nice parking that we had found since it was only across the street.

We went into Payless to buy Winter some new shoes since she had bought new shoes and then lost them so she has been wearing sandals for awhile and she needs some comfy ones. Since I find shoe shopping very tedious I joined Alice, Ian and Dad to go get some Sushi at a nearby restaurant. I had some Edamame, Tempura, and Fried Tofu. It was all vert tasty and I had Alice taste some of the Edamame and warned her that if she was going to have probably a lot of this in the next month and a half. We arranged my food so that it was numerically pleasing, and then Winter and Mom joined us. Winter had some cucumber rolls and Mom got a big plate thing of Sushi. Alice also got a box of Sushi which was very orderly and looked very pretty.

Quickly Mom and I bought me some new shoes for more practical use on the road and then we put my old shoes in a bag.

Next we walked from the Sushi place the vaguely short walk to the Vancouver Art Gallery. The museum was seriously renovating and on top of that they were going to be closing an hour from when we arrived, so when we went to buy tickets we were worried it wasn’t worth our money but we wanted to see it so we did. We went to the top floor first and saw an exhibit of an artist who’s name is not coming to me. She had a lot of cool stuff and we got to look at a lot of it.

Next we went down on the elevator and a woman was waiting for us and made sure that we were going to the right floor since half of them were off limits due to the construction.

Ian left us and we got down and went to the other exhibit which had a lot of large installations. There was an airplane in the middle of one of the rooms, a sand castle, a giant dinosaur bone sculpture though it was mostly just the spine. As we went in further there was a lot of very cool artwork. Some of them had quite funny literal names, “The History of Chinese Art and the History of Modern Art - washed two minutes in a washing machine”. Once we finished that exhibit, we went to go collect the shoes that we had left at the coat check.

Then we headed to the big book store, Chapters. We started by getting some Math books that we are going to use when Alice teaches us Math. After that we got lost wondering through all of the books and spent quite a lot of time. At some point Alex (Alice’s above mentioned friend who she is staying with) soon followed by Lisa, Alex’s wife showed up at the bookstore. We all got together briefly to discuss dinner plans and Alice, Lisa and I all went in her Bug to get to the place we were going to have dinner. We got there a whole lot earlier than the rest of the gang since they had to walk to the restaurant instead of drive since the parking wasn’t manageable.

We had a very nice meal and then Dad, Mom, Alex and I all headed back to the parking garage to drive to an ice cream place for dessert. The walk wasn’t too long but it meant that Alice, Lisa and Winter were likely to be hanging out in the ice cream place for a long time though.

When we got to the lot and walked in, Mommy said something about the window being broken. I was a bit confused since I was assuming someone had bumped into the back of the car and there was a crack in it but I couldn’t see anything. As we approached I saw that the window to Mommy’s seat was gone and there was a pile of glass on the floor. The guy who was there asked us if this was our car and when we said yes, instead of doing the polite, civilized, human, thing to do and tell us that he was sorry and explain to us what happened, he told us that we were stupid (he didn’t use the word stupid but he came very close) for leaving all of our stuff in the car. We told him that we were on a fifty state tour and if we wanted to take everything out we would have had to take about three hours every time we checked in or out of a hotel and the trip would be nothing but bringing things in and out of a hotel. He kept telling us how wrong we were and finally he just left to go be an idiot somewhere else.

Though while he was still there we looked through to see what had been stolen. Mom found that all of her change was gone the grand total being about two dollars of American money though mostly in pennies. Dad lost a blanket that he used to block out the sun from the computer screen. Though weirdly they hadn’t stolen Carmen or our radio. We were very relieved that they hadn’t stolen anything of value though still a bit shook up about the whole thing. Then I remembered that I had forgotten to take out my DVD book from the car. I instantly went through the mess in the car and couldn’t find it. I looked everywhere but they had obviously stolen it. I was in tears it was literally a multi thousand dollar worth collection of DVD’s and software since I had a whole lot of expensive box sets and video editing software in there. The worst part was that my Season One disk of Veronica Mars that had a signature from Jason Dohring on it was in the bag. Alex called Lisa as well as the police to tell them what happened.

Soon after Lisa, Alice and Winter showed up and we all looked through the car and discussed our options. We were in the parking lot for quite awhile and I was still trying to get myself together. After a long time we split up and went to get the long prolonged ice cream.

We got to go to a crazy place with around 200 flavors and I finally got to try garlic ice cream which is something I wanted to try for a very long time now. It was good but I only ate half since I was still a bit shaky and what not. We all took turns staying in the car since the window is gone and there is no one who can fix it who is open tonight.

Once we were done we said our goodbyes and then we went back home to empty everything from the car into a hotel room so no one will take advantage of our lack of window. Every one is in a sad mood and life is not great right now.

As for the DVD’s here is the list, if you have any of these and do not need them anymore or have an extra copy or if you know of a sale going on that may have any of them for cheap, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE, comment. Also money may be needed since this is going to be a lot to fix everything that was broken, anyway here is the list:

ETA: Crossed off items have already been donated. Thanks to everyone for their extreme kindness.

(Note that all DVDs were in WIDE SCREEN.)

Our address is P.O. Box 115, Newbury Park, CA 91319. But please email or comment to us first to avoid duplications.

6/12 ETA: Just added Saved and True Stories (the Talking Heads mocumentary) since I just remembered them.


Arrested Development Season 1-3
Angel the Series Season 5
Buffy Seasons 1-7 (I bought them all individually but I will likely get the Chosen collection since it wasn’t out when I bought mine)
Firefly the complete series
Wonderfalls the complete series
Gilmore Girls season 1-6
Veronica Mars 3 copies of season 1
Veronica Mars season 2
Lord of the Rings Fellowship of the Rings, Two Tower and Return of the King all of them the extended version also I had the non extended Fellowship but that I do not need to re buy.
Trouble Chocolate Disk 1-5
Ranma 1/2 Season 1
Ranma 1/2 Season 3
Love Actually
Down With Love
Run Lola Run
Lilo and Stitch
Toy Story 1, 2 and bonus Dvd collection
Pirate of the Caribbean number 1
Everything is Illuminated
Little Miss Sunshine
Chicago
Chorus Line
Donny Darko
Bend it Like Beckham
Notting Hill
Spirited Away
Shrek 2
Moulin Rouge
The Incredibles
Serenity
Saved
True Stories
Final Cut Studio all of the disks that come with the box minus the installation disk because the disk somehow made it’s way to a box in storage but the rest were in my bag
Final Draft which I will most likely not replace since it was installed onto my computer
Avid, not installed onto my computer though also not likely to be replaced
Instant Immersion French
That is all I can think of at this very moment though I will update if there is more that I remember.