Thieves!

Ironically, we were just confidently telling our guests that Greengate Grove is a very safe community. Everyone puts out money for propane. We put one of our 40 lb. tanks out last night, with an envelope holding $28 for a propane fill. Pony Express comes around on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, but we never know what time they'll arrive, so we've started putting the empty tank out the night before.

We've been putting our propane tanks out in this same way for the last five years in the Valley and never had any problem. This morning when we started to pull out of the driveway, I turned to make sure I would miss the tank, which was on the edge of the driveway near the street. Only it wasn't there.

We went to the office to report the theft, and the lady at the desk, Mickey, said that she's never heard of such a theft in Greengate Grove. Guess ours is the first. Now we have to go buy a new tank and get it filled. We spent part of today exploring our options. Fortunately, the second tank has plenty of propane to keep us warm for the next couple of days.

Mickey encouraged us to make a police report, so we did. It turns out that Hidalgo County responds here. The trooper had evidently never heard of a report of a propane tank theft.

We did score one victory: we ordered AT&T high speed Internet, DSL with up to 6 Mbps download speed. Woo-hoo! Now we have to wait for them to ship the equipment. We're not sure when our service will start, but it can't be too soon. We've had frustratingly slow and interrupted Verizon service on our USB modem and not much better on our cellphones.

Rain, Rain, Go Away! It started raining again yesterday evening, and it's been raining steadily ever since. Sometimes it's just a drizzle, sometimes it's harder, and it's always cold (for here). We're tired of this cold, rainy weather, but really glad we're not in the midwest, where the Weather Service is describing "bitter cold" and issuing warnings for wind chill.

We took our Christmas decorations down today, but we won't try to pack them up and put them in the shed until it stops raining. Everything would just get wet, so for now it's all stacked on the coffee table.