Tidings of comfort and joy

Merry Christmas, all!

Christmas story for the week: Maddie and I went to Seattle yesterday to pound on the door of HNA (my old school, her current school) because she left a bunch of books that she needs inside over break. After an unsuccessful visit (and a trip to the nuns' house), we figured we'd regroup at this coffee place down the road called Fuel. (Fuel is Tully's down the block rival. I like them better because 1) it's a local place, not a chain, and 2) the coffee is much, much, much better).

Anyway, we've parked at Fuel, and a red truck stopped at the stop sign turns left onto 19th St. Only the tool box in the back of the struck slid backwards and slammed into the backdoors so hard that the door flew open and the tool box fell out of the truck. The truck itself kept driving, unaware that anything had gone wrong.

Being the bleeding-heart idiot that I am, I promptly hurried into the street to pick up the toolbox. I tried to just run past it and grab the handle and keep going so that traffic wouldn't be an issue, but the box fell open before I reached the curb and all the tools fell out, in the lane and in this really deep puddle by the curb. As I scrambled to get them all, a group of people that had been watching the whol fiasco from in front of Fuel started dealing with the oncoming cars, which kept me pretty safe (although none of the drivers seemed to want to drive over the tools, so they waited rather patiently). One guy from the group came over to help, and we started trying to work out how we would get the tools back to the guy. None of us had caught his plate number, and we didn't know what company he was working for.

LUCKILY, a cab driver had been waiting at the stop sign on the side of the street opposite where the truck had been stopped. He pulled up next to me and the dude helping me out, pounded twice on the side of the cab, and then sped off. We weren't sure how, but he managed to catch the guys in the red truck, because they came back. They hadn't even realized that the back doors had opened, and apparently it would have cost over $200 to replace the things in the box. We put them in the truck, said "Merry Christmas," and then I went and had a mocha.

It was like the teamwork Christmas miracle. It was really cool.