Rough month, rough move

Well, here am I in my new home, Claremont, CA. My Dad had a car accident a week before my move west, and I spent a worried weekend in the hospital in Seattle while he and my Mom and sister and I got through the first few days of his broken L1 vertebrae. I had to go back to Cambridge too soon, but my sister stayed on for a week more, replaced by my other sister after that. Dad is now on a rapid road to full recovery, it seems, but it’s been painful.
My packing up went pretty well, and I had nice visits with a sister in Pennsylvania and then a college buddy in Columbus, OH. My long-time luck on long-distance trips and moves gave out along the way, however, when my car was broken into in a hotel parking lot in the midwest. They tried to steal the car and drive away with the U-haul trailer but only succeeded in tearing up the ignition assembly. Amateurs, I guess, and thank god for that. They then turned their attention to the contents of the car, and found my desktop computer under a tarpulin, riding more safely, I thought, over the soft suspension of the car than over the hard bouncing trailer axel. They also found the camera that was tucked in under a box to be handy for a picture along the way but which I thus forgot to take up to the room with me. They also grabbed a gym bag containing an mp3 player/recorder and two cases filled with every cd I’ve ever pirated (some kind of capitalist justice there, I suppose). I was stuck for two days waiting for the repair on the car. The rest of the trip was pretty nice, but I grieved the whole way for the computer, a lovingly home-made box I was totally attached to. I also really liked that old Nikon FE with the 24mm lens. Oh well.
Anyway, August is over, Dad is on the mend, the theft losses are fading into memory, and a new semester at a great new college job is under way. I never was so glad to see September!