jay | Lucky Saturday?

My son James left his backpack, containing two $60 textbooks and a biology project and a graphing calculator, sitting outside the entrance to a grocery store on Friday afternoon. It disappeared.

Yesterday, James and I got up early and went back to the store. The manager said that no one had put it in lost&found, so we assumed theft and began dumpster-diving in the areas around the store. No luck, mostly... did find a woman's purse, though -- empty, with nothing to identify it, so I left it there. Towards the end, I saw a guy picking out soda cans from a trash can. I approached him and asked if he'd seen any backpacks while out harvesting cans. "Been ripped-off?" he said. I nodded. "Actually, there's a backpack in this one!" he said. And behold, half covered in newspapers and debris was James's backpack, complete except for the calculator! I don't think he quite realizes how lucky he was to recover it... otherwise, he would have had to earn the $200 to replace the contents and backpack.

This morning search, though a success, left me in need of a shower and hence late to dim-sum with

inflectionpoint. But that was OK... she and I lingered over coffee made with eggnog (she was out of milk ;) and then meandered around Oakland before finding the restaurant we wanted. And I experienced the dim-sum process, with pushcarts and servers trying to convince us to select one of their dishes. And I shared some bok choy and pea sprouts and shrimp balls with Joanne, as well as some delicious elastic dessert thing filled with dark sesame. Mmmmm.

And on the way home, I saw

baiku at last, in a Denny's parking lot in San Leandro with

tenacious_snail.

And had a good time out with

patgreene, despite us both starting out a bit weary (I'd just braved Costco on the Saturday before Thanksgiving).