The weekend began well - On Saturday I didn't wake up until noon and after I finally dragged myself out of bed I went over to EC to ship Julie's books for her and to play Assassin's Creed on her Xbox 360. Came home, hung out with Max and Libi for a while, went to bed....

The next morning I woke up to a phone call, asking me to receive a package for my birthday - my dad had gotten me an edible arrangement! It came in a super janky looking crate, which I actually really enjoyed. While the fruit was exciting (the dark chocolate covered strawberries were my favorite) it was also the time when I began to realize that my wallet was missing.

Super excited about my edible arrangement!

I spent around 2 hours looking for the wallet where I basically overturned my room, Max's room, and even went to EC to look in Julie's room. It was nowhere, and I began to get rather frantic and worried. There was literally no place in my room that hadn't been searched, and I had only been in a few spots in Max's room and Julie's room... After I sent out a mass email to my dorm, bribing people with cookies and cash to return the wallet if found, I realized it would be quite prudent to check my account.

One hundred dollars, spent from my credit card.

One hundred dollars, spent from my VISA prepaid gift card.

It's a good thing I keep a disgustingly well-updated excel sheet of my expenses on my computer, and a list of my card numbers.

Well, I guess that answers where my wallet was - it wasn't lost, it was stolen. I knew that I had had the wallet when I got home on Saturday, because I used my ID to get back in, and I knew that I had left my wallet in my room when I went to hang out with Max in his room across the hall. Like always, I had left the door open, trusting that people would respect my privacy and my space like they had back in F-entry of the dorm. Apparently, I'm too trusting.

Which, the wallet being stolen isn't everyone's biggest nightmare. Cards are easily cancelled, and I won't miss the fifteen dollars of cash I had in my wallet too much. The nightmare is that now, I'm terrified of leaving my door open for any period of time. Going to the bathroom? Next to Max's room, which means it's too far of a distance to leave the door open. Same goes for washing the dishes, or taking a shower. Being paranoid about your personal belongings getting stolen in what's supposed to be a safe space... I've lived in a dormitory for 6 years, the first 4 with crazy early-teenage girls (high school). 6 years of built up trust for the people I live with, suddenly all down the drain.

So I spent a good 2 hours on my birthday looking for my wallet, and spent another good 3 hours calling Bank of America (who was great, by the way! They're super friendly and helpful) and OneVanilla, where my prepaid gift cards were from (who were also awesome), and the MIT Police to report the theft. It was a rather unfortunate way to spend a birthday.

Later, though, Caitlin and Harvey came in and took me to Thelonious Monkfish for dinner, which was pretty great. I got to hang out with my friends, since there was nothing else I could do about the wallet at the moment.

Thelonious Monkfish: Mango Salmon!

Monday morning I woke up early to go to the MIT Police department to ask for a copy of the report, since I needed it to waive the $15 fee for a new MIT ID. Unfortunately, their printers were down so I was unable to get a copy or apply for a new ID, and since I didn't have any ID on me (my MIT ID was stolen and I forgot that passports were a thing) I was also unable to apply for a temporary debit card. After work, I stopped by the Police department to ask again for the copy of the report, and I got it, so that meant 5 extra minutes of sleeping in on Tuesday!

I did end up sleeping in those extra 5 minutes and I managed to get everything dealt with Tuesday morning, although I ended up being 10 minutes late to work - luckily, no one noticed.

The first few days of work were pretty slow; we ended up making some sample designs for swings and did some research for modeling the Collier Memorial. We did manage to get our hands on a 3d printer for free though - MIT had a couple to lend out to professors, so we got one to do modeling for the Collier Memorial. Estelle and I are still looking into expenses, but we are going to make a 1/2":1' scale model of the memorial out of white PLA, which is pretty exciting!

Thursday was spent making a study model for the structure of the swings. We went to Home Depot (which actually isn't that far, which was exciting to find out) to buy a bunch of steel rods to use, but we had no way of welding the rods together so we ended up using a finer wire to bind the rods together. We also used some elmer's glue to give the rods some friction so the wire binding would hold.

Attempting to attach steel rods by coiling wire very carefully

When Friday finally rolled around I was super excited for the weekend. We spent a pretty chill day at work, because we had finalized the shape of the swing and we were just trying to figure out a way to make the swings without having to do too much welding, which is time-consuming and expensive. We kind of figured out a way, but it makes the swing much less elegant so we'll see how that flies.

On the other hand, I spent an awesome girl's night with Veronica and Catherine walking around the Prudential Center and looking at all the beautiful things we couldn't afford (Tiffany's, anyone?), and I finally bought myself Seriously... I'm Kidding by Ellen Degeneres, so I think I'm going to curl up with tea and the book now.