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Monday, December 19, 2011

Lost and Found

When the worst thing you can say about a move is that you thought you had lost your camera, it's safe to assume that it was a fairly smooth move. Even though the camera would have been insured and would have been replaced, it was a headache of claims and paperwork and questions that I just didn't want to go through.

On the move day from our house in Lake Zurich, Lindsay had set aside her purse, three wrapped books for a Christmas book exchange (all books about India, "White Tiger," "Holy Cow," and "Delhi Bound: A Book for Kids"), and my newly beloved camera that I still probably can't use properly, my D7000. She gave the movers instructions that what was on the dryer wasn't to be boxed. At one point on move day, she grabbed the camera to take some pictures of the process and thought she put it back in the laundry room. That was the last she remembered seeing it.

After the movers had left for the day and as she was leaving for her Christmas party, she realized that the books were gone and quickly came to the conclusion that the camera was gone too. Figuring it had been packed, she shared the bad news. Knowing that there wasn't much we could do and that I'd be reunited with my newly beloved camera in under a week, I somewhat nervously pretended like it wasn't a big deal.

Fast forward to unpacking day. I wasn't sure what was growing faster, the stack of empty unpacked boxes in my driveway or the angst that went along with none of those boxes containing my camera. I had pretty much resigned myself to the fact that the camera had gone missing. At one point during the day, Lindsay really wanted to show me the office which was the first fully unpacked room. I totally thought she had found the camera and I'd see it sitting proudly on the middle of the desk. No camera, and worse yet my disappointed reaction wasn't exactly what a deservedly proud Lindsay had hoped to see. Regardless, at the end of the day, I still had no camera. The only glimmer of hope was the fact that those three wrapped books were also missing.

The next day there were far fewer boxes to get through and my mood grew more sour with each passing box. My job for the day was to finish the garage as Lindsay and her Mom finished a couple different rooms. Not surprisingly, they finished first (I'm not the speediest of movers, especially when it comes to a place as foreign to me as a garage). No camera.

Since I had already pre-opened the boxes in the garage (I took a quick look inside to see if the camera was visible the previous day), I really wasn't expecting much. As I opened the final box (yes, it really was the final box), I moved a clear plastic container with some sort of foreign looking tool (it may have been what some people refer to as a "hammer") and my eye immediately caught three book-shaped objects covered in my wife's signature wrapping paper (yes, she has signature wrapping paper; it's an idea my mother gave her and if you've received a gift from us in the past five years it's been covered in silver paper with white dots, which Lindsay likes for it's versatility at the holidays, for birthdays, for weddings, etc.). The wrapping paper was my first glimmer of hope throughout the entire process. I looked a little closer and nestled between my saws (I didn't even know I had enough saws to nestle around something) was my camera packed in its case.

My mood changed instantly.

The moral of the story, I guess, is to make sure if you have professional movers that you either need to put some sort of flashing sign next to items that they shouldn't move or, better yet, just put the items in your car. In the end, movers will move anything in a house. My in-laws, who have moved a number of times through the years, recounted their favorite story from one of those moves. Someone in the house had made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, took a bite, and set it down. When they got to the new house, neatly wrapped in one of the boxes was a partially eaten sandwich. Movers will move anything.

2 comments:

  1. Oh my gosh.. My heart STOPPED while I read that post. I got the D7000 for Christmas and I would be in TEARS if I thought I lost it!

    (glad the books turned up too!)

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    1. Enjoy the new camera (but keep it on your person when you move), I got the 18-200 lens to go with it and couldn't be happier. It's a lot more camera than I was using before (D40) but I've been very happy with both the camera and the versatility of the lens.

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