VIOLATED

21 July 2003

I don't know whether to feel relieved or rejected.

We went to San Francisco today to see a matinee of Harold Crabtree's When Pigs Fly, a very funny revue. We parked on the street, two blocks from the theatre, across the street from Davies Symphony Hall. When the play was over, we went to a lovely Italian restaurant for dinner.

When we got back to the car, it had been broken into. Everything in the glove compartment and the tape box was all over the front seat and the floor. It's a strange feeling knowing a stranger has been rifling through your stuff. I remember when I was in grammar school and someone broke into our house. I had a piggy bank in my underwear drawer and it had been smashed and my meager savings gone. There was a real feeling of "violation" knowing somebody had been in my underwear drawer.

So our car was violated. But the thing is--they took nothing. Was our stuff not valuable enough that a common thief rejected it? Weren't they thrilled to find Steve Schalchlin CDs? Didn't they want the hardback I was reading on the drive down? Didn't they want the tattered California map that is so hopelessly outdated?

Apparently they didn't realize we had a CD player in the trunk of the car. It's been broken for months, so there is a tape in the tape player and I guess they didn't think to look anywhere else.

So I guess we were lucky. But I still feel violated.

Oh--they did take one thing--the magnifying glass I keep in the door to read the small print on maps. I guess that can be easily replaced, if I am ever able to drive again.

"Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?"

Lemme tell you, if you need to get to San Francisco in a hurry, ride with Walt. Not that he drives fast, but it is 20 miles from Berkeley to San Francisco and it can take us an hour to get to Berkeley from here (60 miles) and another hour to get to San Francisco (traffic). Today especially, since there was a Giants game and we were on the tail end of game traffic. But by taking the frontage road, we got waaaay ahead of the freeway traffic and then by going through Alameda to get to the bridge, instead of joining the 30 minute long backup at the toll plaza, we sailed right through with only a momentary delay.

The show was very funny and pretty much needs to be seen to be appreciated. But one particularly memorable number was "Wear your vanity with pride," where two of the singers, seated at vanity tables, end up wearing the tables as dresses. (Like I said, you hadda been there).

It was very difficult to leave the 65 degree cool of San Francisco and return to the 100+ degree weather of the valley again. (It is now approaching 9 p.m. and I'm sitting here with sweat dripping off of me. I'm typing pretty much normally because I've had to remove the band around my arm, since it's soaked with sweat.)

We managed to hit game traffic on the way home too, as the game had just ended, but fortunately by the time we'd crossed the bridge it had started to lighten up again.

There was a time when I loved leaving here and going to the city. But now we have horrendous traffic most of the time and today we have big city crime.