lost my camera
the journal of Michael Werneburg
twenty-seven years and one million words
This weekend I rented a car from a sketchy agency that had to its credit only its proximity to my home.
When I showed up at the place on Thursday night I could see it was a real bottom-feeder but rather than try to find a new car at 19:00 the evening before a long weekend I set off in the rental. Which turned out to be damaged. The passenger door was badly scratched (noted in the walkaround pre-inspection), there was damage to the lining around the wheel well (ditto) and inside there was damage to the sound baffling and carpet (ditto). When we got onto highway speed there was also quite a bit of noise coming through that space, and then my wife complained of cold air coming in.
But we made it to my mum's place in a small city an hour away for Easter without incident on Friday. The car was unnerving, but seemed sound.
Then on a shopping trip yesterday, the passenger door's window ceased to function: it was stuck open. Rather than go another night of rain with the window open, we phoned the agency and agreed to return it to exchange the thing. So we drove back, and I argued a discount out of the harried dude who was manning the fort as I eyed several badly damaged cars in the lot and wondered what sort of surgery had gone into getting our clunker back on the road. We swept through the car, transferring everything, got our discount and the new car (by new, I mean a 2004 Impala with 340,000k on it) and off we went.
We resumed our intended shopping trip. When we pulled into the lot of the first location an hour later, I noticed that my camera bag wasn't present. We'd missed it we transferred everything because it was in one of those baby armrest containers you never actually use because it's not obvious.
I called the agency and naturally they'd rented the car in the hour since I'd left. Probably to the other two gents who were at the agency mid-day with us, simularly returning an unsatisfactory rental.
This weekend, I've had to watch helplessly as Kenny painted Easter eggs and had his first search for chocolates and toys left by the Easter Bunny (a shadowy figure that unnerves the boy).
Never done anything this stupid. Guess I'm a bit worn out. We've been on, non-stop, for months now. This is the only weekend we've had without anything major to take care of (just some furniture to buy and an Easter dinner with the family). Finding a home in a city where we're not resident, arranging the hundred little things from driver's licenses to health insurance to phones, preparing the permanent residency application, trying to deal with a three year old who refuses to participate in any social events and increasingly asks to go "home", and hoping that my wife can make some social connections of her own. And then there's work, where I've joined a tiny software firm that's taken on a full-bore SAS70 audit to please a customer. Exhausting.
The camera might still turn up, if the guys at the agency and the renters are honest. I'm not expecting much; this isn't Japan.