Return of the Random Cookie Thief

With four shows coming up in just as many nights, and a slew of photos to edit and a website to revamp, not to mention my real job (science!), I shouldn't be wasting time writing this. But whatever, it's my lunch break.

When I was in Australia on a volunteer program in the summer of 2004 (immediately after graduating from Penn State), our group was working at Hanson Bay Sanctuary. It's located on Kangaroo Island, which is an 8 minute tiny plane flight from Adelaide. It's at the opposite end of the island from Kingscote, which is the closest thing to a town on the island. Basically, there was nothing south of us except Antarctica. The stars at night were amazing...the Milky Way was a bright band running across the entire sky. But all this is just backdrop.

Being as how we were an hour's drive from the town, and thus the grocery store, someone went into the town once a week to get supplies. This included all the food we had for the entire week. Which, of course, included cookies. And not just any cookies, but the best cookies ever - Tim Tams! A delicacy only found in Australia and, inexplicably, Fiji (probably other places as well, but none that I've been). Somehow, we all noticed that cookies were disappearing at night at an alarming rate. I'm not talking one or two cookies, but five or six. We had no clue as to who was the perpetrator, but one night my friend Tom left a note on the cookies that went something like this: "Dear Random Cookie Thief, Please stop stealing all the cookies. If you don't, I will break your knees. Sincerely, Random Knee Breaker Guy." Juvenile, perhaps. But funny.

Fast forward to San Diego, present time. Every two weeks we biomedical sciences graduate students have "lunch talks," which consist of research presentations by students. And free pizza. Some weeks there is an overabundance of pizza left over, so I take some back to lab with me and store it in the common fridge on our floor. You have to understand that, as a poor graduate student, this pizza is my lunch and sometimes dinner for two days.

So I don't really take it lightly when, after bringing back four pieces of pizza (two days' worth of lunch!), I go to heat some up the next day and there's ONE piece left. WTF, mate? I could understand it when I brought it back in the pizza box and stored it in the fridge as is. I mean, usually it's customary to leave a note on things when they're communal, but I can see how someone might have made that mistake. So I took to wrapping up the pizza in saran wrap, to make it look more like someone's lunch. And still someone was eating it. Double WTF, mate?

Maybe as one of four children I have a heightened sense of propriety. I don't like people messing with my stuff without asking. I'm not selfish though - if you ask, you'll usually get whatever you're asking for. But have the decency to ask! Don't just eat random people's food in the fridge! And I hate passive aggressive actions, so I didn't want to put a sign on the fridge regarding the eating of other people's food. I wish I knew who was doing it so I could confront them. But I don't have the time to stalk the kitchen. So I ended up moving my remaining pizza this week to the crisper and putting a note on it saying "Natalie's pizza - Please don't eat unless you have my permission!" I hate to think that that's necessary, in a work situation where I am probably one of the youngest people using that kitchen. But sadly, sometimes grown-ups need to be treated like children. Sigh.