NEIL!!!

Warning: This post may contain foul language

I interrupt the regular chronological flow of blog posts to bring you this update.

Neil has returned. After several months of dormancy, Neil has found us at the Auckland YHA hostel and is carrying on his campaign of irritation.

This time the little asshole stole my book.

The YHA kitchen, dining, and common area is set up with many, many cubbyholes in which to store food and other items. Usually, people label all their food items and stick them in one cubbyhole, and occasionally add more items to that same cubby. Glen and I had put out books in the cubby that also contained our bread, tea, peanut butter, jam, and travel mugs. Everything was labeled.

When we got back to the hostel from our morning walk, Glen went to get the laptop and I went to get my book. I am was reading Colleen McCullough's Caesar, part of her Masters of Rome series. It was an engrossing read, I was quite happy with it and had the delightful anticipation of having at least two thirds of the book left to read.

I poked around in the cubby for the book, moving aside the tea and travel mugs that I placed in front of our books in the morning and that were still in their original places. Glen's book was there. Some dilapidated old novel about some sordid love tale was there. That was not my book. My book was missing. Keeping an optimistic frame of mind, I checked my room. Nope, no book. I went back to the cubby wall. Definitely no book.

SOME ASSHAT STOLE MY BOOK. And as a snarky little slap, they replaced it with an old and infinitely inferior bit of trash that they probably stole from the book exchange shelves in the basement entertainment room.

I informed the staff at reception of the theft. Of course they aren't able to do anything, and it has nothing to do with them, but there are security cameras in the cubby area and it is good to inform them of such things in case there are other problems. The girl at the desk sympathized with me, and then looked at me quizzically and said in bemused disbelief "they moved your stuff back to where it was before? And they replaced the book with something else??"

Man, am I ever pissed off about this one. I wanted that book, it was going to carry me through a good two weeks of hardcore reading. Neil was a bastard when he stole our food. Now he's a downright asshole, and that wee modicum of faith I built up after the Australia episodes that maybe hostellers aren't such a bad, thieving lot after all has been completely eradicated.

Jerks.