If anyone out there ever wants to see me at my most pathetic, here's a great tip of how to go about it:

Get me to believe, in the process of moving, that my primary data drive is not formatted. Extra points if there is a drive bought expressly for the purpose of backing everything up sitting on the table, waiting for the move to be complete, and even more points if you can somehow arrange it so that my previous backup was accidentally formatted over into a boot drive for another computer.

This sort of thing is happening so much that it's becoming this blog's own cliche.

Turns out that it was another heating issue. Heating and circulation is, lest we forget, one of the main reasons that I'm moving out of Thrifthaven. One reason, but certainly not the only.

Last night, Thrifthaven was crawling with police officers. It seems that the former couple across the way had non-overlapping expectations as to how custody of their little girl would go this week. He seemed more reluctant to leave when she asked him to than she was to call the police and have him escorted off.

I don't now if they usually bring a half-dozen cops to domestic dispute cases or whether it was just a particularly boring evening and none of them had anything better to do. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that it wasn't the first time they had to stop by that particular apartment. I've met each member of the couple over the last couple of months and they exude drama. I feel sorry for their neighbor when they were together.

The entire time all of this is occuring, Strang is sitting on his deck chair watching on. Even though they were completely across the way, he appeared to be scared to the point of wetting himself. Not scared enough to go inside, but scared enough to give me the impression that it would be an inopportune time for a drug test, to pick a random example.

But there were some upsides. It turns out that my neighbor Saul the Mumbler has a truck, solving that particular problem. I'd forgotten all about that. Both he and Snowflake - two of the only three second-floor neighbors that were there when I moved in - are vicariously happy for me that I'm getting out. Saul said he's planning to get out, too, but I'm not sure how he's going to be able to afford it. Snowflake is herself packing. She's getting some pretty compehensive back surgery in Idaho Falls. She's quite verbal about her new relationship with God (or is that her relationship with a new God?) and seems happy about her life's new direction.

She's also got about 30 cans of RC Cola in her fridge, courtesy of the roulette dispenser. I'd left my fridge open the previous night so I didn't have a cold coke. I offered her to trade a warm coke for a cold one, but she insisted on giving me a half-dozen cans gratis. I appreciate the sentiment, but I'm never going to slog through all this cola.