My Monday morning had started out well enough. I’d gotten up early so I could go to the gym and knock out an easy 4-miler, then use the weight machines. I’d made it out my apartment’s front door and down the five steps to the exit to my building—and that’s when I saw glass all over the ground.

Some jerk had broken two of the panes of glass in our building’s front door. I couldn’t help but notice that they were the two closest to the building’s doorknob; the insinuation is certainly that someone did this in order to get inside. Now, that might not be it at all. It could just be some kid being a jerk, or a complete and utter accident. But none the less, it’s hard to not draw that sort of conclusion.

I’ve been fortunate enough to never end up getting robbed. I was attacked (blatantly) by pickpockets in Italy twice back in 1999, but I’ve never come home to find that someone’s been in my home and taking all of my prized possessions. I hope to keep things that way, to be honest. My first response was to just stare at the destruction, shocked that someone would do that. Then I got a little pissed off and angry at whatever jerk did this.

Aaaaaaaaaaaand, then I ran for my camera. I am, if nothing else, slightly predictable. (When I got back from the gym I then took a second set of pictures that turned out much better. Probably because I was thinking a little clearer.)

By the time I got home in the evening, the rental office had already stripped all the glass out of the door (they were sweeping up the stuff on the floor before I even returned from the gym) and temporarily nailed a big sheet plexiglass over the window in the door. All that mess and destruction and 18 hours later, it’s already gone. And don’t get me wrong, I’m still irritated at whomever did that, but I wasn’t hurt and to the best of my knowledge neither was anyone else in the building. So all’s well that ends well, right? A minorly distressing event, but I’m past it. Onwards, right?

In a tangential piece of news, I also received news yesterday that neither Julie nor I got into the New York City Marathon. It’s funny, I’d assumed that either both of us would get in, or one of us would and the other wouldn’t and we’d have to figure out a new strategy. It honestly hadn’t struck me that neither one of us would make it in. That was pretty unexpected. And having to scratch our plans for the marathon sucks, perhaps because I already had to scratch one other race earlier this year that I’d really been looking forward to.

Still, at least we didn’t end up with the “one person made it in and the other did not” dilemma. We’d promised that we would both run the same marathon this year but I suspect that had that situation actually happened, the person who didn’t make it in would have pushed the other to do so. So both of us not getting it is better than just one. We’re eyeing another couple of options now and will probably decide in the next week or two what we’re going to tackle.

Life is full of little surprises.