The time I spent posting pictures and entries, however, grew thinner and more insufficient as the weeks rolled by. Also, Blogger (the hosting website) decided to misbehave, and while I was ready to click "Publish!" on my Ireland post, the internet in my dorm crashed and a Blogger error meant that only the first two sentences had been saved. It was an epic post, too. What a pity.
I was discouraged, and so I waited until about two weeks ago to re-write that entry from scratch along with about four others. I wrote two big ones while sitting at the British Library--complete with about 20 photos each--in Microsoft Word, saved them, and was going to put on the finishing touches the next morning in my room. That same night, though, Anthony, Natalie and I (three of the six Marquette kids at City U) went out to our favorite pub for dinner on our way home from the library. We ended up staying for two hours and had a great time chatting. When we stood up to leave, I noticed my bag and beloved laptop were gone from their place at my feet. My bag, in which my computer and schoolwork had been stored, was snatched away and gone for good without me even noticing a thing. It was one of four bags stolen from that single pub in a three-hour span that night.
The most tragic part: all of my pictures, documents (including two fresh posts for this blog) and music were on that computer. I had deleted everything off my camera as soon as I had downloaded them onto my laptop. Needless to say, I could not and did not write or upload pictures. Plus, a month had passed since the last entry, and the best way for me to remember everything I did was to look at the pictures I had taken. When they were gone, so too was the probability that my posts would have much meat to them. If you're like me, you get more out of the pictures and captions than the posts themselves.
How I felt after losing my laptop.(from Flickr CreativeCommons, all rights apply)
It would have been a shame to have spent a whole semester in London and not adopt even a drop of what they call the "Dunkirk spirit." Just because I got shafted by a few petty thieves doesn't mean I have to put a lid on everything. Thankfully, for nearly everything I visited and did during the last two months, I was accompanied by Anthony, Jim or my parents and their own cameras. As I get copies of pictures from them, I'll post them up. I feel like I'm cheating; writing about the trip after getting home is kind of sad. But better late than never, right?
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