Good & Bad

by Wilfred Bereswill

Sorry for not having this up earlier.  I'm still recovering from the theft of my things, including my Macbook Pro on a business trip.  It's a longer process replacing eveything than I would have thought.  I've reposted last Sunday's post about what happened.  I haven't heard a peep from the police in Tempe and the way it seems, I'm not likely to.  I did see a Macbook Pro like mine on Craigslist in Phoenix that went for sale the night mine was stolen and the ad said, "EMERGENCY, must sell now."  The cops didn't feel like they would investigate it, and I got no response to my query.  I've accepted that it's all gone.

On the good side (remember the name of the post) my short story, Sinfully Delicious is on sale now at OmniLit by Echelon Press Publishing.   It's inexpensive, it's saucy and I'd love for you to give it a try.  As a matter of fact, I'll give a copy to one poster at random.  Check back at the end of the day.

Some temptations really are TO DIE FOR.

How could anything that tastes and feels so right be so wrong? I just can’t seem to help myself, but who am I really hurting? I mean…it’s just a little snack or two…
 We’re brought up to know the difference between right and wrong, but sometimes, slipping to the dark side is out of our control.







VIOLATED

On Thursday I traveled to Phoenix for business. I was picked up from the airport by the regional office in my contact's company mini-van, threw my suitcase and briefcase into the back of the van and spent the next 7 hours in the scorching Phoenix 115 degree heat. In a long sleeve white shirt and tie no less.

At 5:45 PM three people from the office took me out to a fabulous dinner at Roy's Hawiaan Fusion in an upscale neighborhood. We had great food and talk and a few drinks. At 7 PM we walked out to the parking lot and the mini-van's driver door wouldn't open. I got in the passenger side and opened the door, but my host just stood there looking at her vans door handle. I asked what was wrong and she said something looked wrong. I got out and took a look and somebody had punched out the lock. The next thing she said was, "Is your stuff in the car?"

It was all gone. My suitcase with my clothes. My briefcase with my personal MacBook Pro, digital camera, iPod Touch, and so on. It felt like I had been punched in the stomach.

If that weren't bad enough, all of the wedding videos I took with my new Flip video and had downloaded on my Mac were gone. They were deleted off the camera as I put them on my computer. I had finished putting all the video together with a bunch of pictures and had them nicely arranged with some cool effects. I burned one disc, and it was in the computer when it was stolen. It is gone. That's what hurts the most.

I stood there on the parking lot, sweating, unbelieving, pissed, helpless, vicitmized and stunned. It happened in broad daylight, in an upscale neighborhood, in a crowded parking lot. Talk about bold.

To make it worse, we called the Tempe police. They didn't even see fit to come to the scene. We gave the police report by phone. No wonder crime is rampant. The police took the friggen' report by phone.

My associates were kind enough to take me to a mall to get a new shirt and underwear. I went to the 4 star hotel with a red backpack with everything I had to my name. The hotel supplied me with a pathetic disposable razor, a toothbrush with 1 row of bristles and a couple of tiny packs of toothpaste and shaving gel.

Not only did I lose all the wedding videos, but all my website design. I have a new short story coming out this week and I now have to figure out how to redesign my entire website.

I still have no idea about how I'm going to reclaim my possessions, but in the meantime I'm down to using my little netbook.