Losing valuables

Make me feel better, please–I was wearing a watch when I left for work this morning, and along the way: No Watch.

I’ve since returned home, checked the likely places I might have left it, and --nothing. It had a loose pin, and I probably dislodged it pulling my backpack on or my jacket. It was the only valuable item I wore routinely–it was a gift from a girlfriend, and I think it set her back around $500.

So: what valuable items have you lost? How long did you wander around, looking in places you’d looked eight times before? How many times did you try to use it, out of habit, only to be reminded that YOU LOST IT, DUMBASS?

Come on, folks, misery loves company.

Not valuables – but a CD holder filled with my favorite CDs, on an airplane. I still kick myself about it fairly regularly, a year and a half later.

I had a nice watch, too. Not as expensive as yours, but it was a gift from my parents and I always got a lot of compliments on it. However, it was uncomfortable to wear when I was using the mouse, so I would leave it off until I was ready to go home.

At the end of one day, I gathered up purse, briefcase, sweater, etc. and also my watch and headed out to the car and home. Some time later I went looking for the watch in the usual places I drop thing when I get home. No watch. I figure it must be in the car–maybe it fell under the seat or I dropped into the trunk when I put stuff in there. No watch.

To this day I keep expecting it to show up in the car somewhere. In reality it probably either got dropped next to the car and someone took it, or it never left my office. We had a few petty thefts from offices at that time–checks, cash, etc. My watch may have been a casualty, but I still can’t quite believe it’s gone.

I lost a small diamond stud earing once. It was missing for about two years. I had all but forgotten it when I moved from one apartment to another. I was rolling up a huge room size antique carpet for the move and, something went “Ping”. I found it!!! It must have been way against the wall, because I vaccumed all the time, and never sucked it up.
It wasn’t real costly, but was the only real diamond I had at the time.

I hope you have the same luck with your watch, but hope it doesn’t take 2 years to find it.

I dropped my engagement ring off my finger twice in a week a couple of weeks ago. First time was worse - in the grass at a bonfire at the local state park at twilight - I felt it fall off and immediately dropped down to look for it, sending my fiance back to the car for a flashlight 'cause if we didn’t find it right then we never would. Last week it was a church luncheon and while I didn’t notice it go, I hadn’t moved from the table since the last time I’d known I’d had it on. It had rolled a seat or two away.

It’s a rock-in-your-stomach-feeling. I’ve hesitated to wear it since. It’s never quite fit right - I have bony hands, and any ring that I don’t have to cram over the knuckle will jangle around the finger - but it’s never fallen off like this before.

Oddly, the same person found it both times - my fiance’s cousin’s husband. I owe him a nice bottle of vino or something at this point.

The watch is inside the cushion cover.

[sub]Well, reading those words in a horoscope made my mother a believer, anyway.[/sub]

As long as you’re not losing your marbles, you’re fine.

Perhaps instead of looking for your watch, you could instead look for another rich girlfriend to buy you another one. :stuck_out_tongue:

About four of five weeks ago, I allowed my (then) not-quite-three-year-old daughter to walk out of the room holding our camera.

She definitely didn’t leave the house. There are really only a limited number of places it could be.

Not. Limited. Enough.

I fully expect the damn thing to turn up again the day after we’ve bought a replacement.

I used to lose things all the time – say, weekly. I am better about it now, slightly.

I lost my current cell phone, finally going down to the Sprint store and buying a replacement when it had been gone for about three weeks. I found the old one maybe five minutes after I got home, tucked behind my jewelry box on my dresser under some folded clothes.

Then I washed it. We have a high-efficiency washer, though, so it dried for three days and turned on without a hitch.

Then, just this month, it was my iPod. I hunted through the car, at work, backstage, everywhere I’d been with it. Just like the cell phone: one week, this time, after I’d purchased the replacement? I found it on my nightstand. Buried under stuff I’d pulled out of the nightstand drawer when I was hunting for it, no less.

My high school class ring is somewhere. It’s really very pretty and does not look like a class ring at all. I would love to find it…

Here’s good news, folks–the damned thing turned up, after less than a full day, inside my backpack. The bent pin had, indeed, come off, but luckily it chose to give when I was slipping my hand inside the pack.

I am taking this for a sign to buy a cheap, everyday watch that I can wear routinely and leave this one in he drawer. I just woke up from a dream in which I had left my laptop recharging for a day in a public alleyway and was dismayed to find it gone when I came back to pick it up. The charger was still there. Wonder what that meant?

I have a similar story with an iPod in a friend’s car. Sucker was lost for 6 months (the iPod, not the car). I had already written it off as having been lost at a gas station restroom somewhere between San Diego and Albuquerque when it turned up. prr, maybe you should look in your buddies car?

I lost my emerald bracelet…the one my husband gave up a year’s hot-rod savings to buy for me because I admired it when we were at the mall.

Found it in the candybar machine at work. There are 5,000 workers in this building and I feel very fortunate that another workerbee didn’t find it first.

My husband lost a not-that-“valuable” ring that was a souvenir of a trip we’d taken, plus (it being stainless steel) it had once saved his fingers from injury by being in the way when a sliding-side truck door at work had been unsecured and slid closed with great force, being stopped by the ring. He couldn’t figure out where it had gone. I eventually found it in the bottom of the silverware “cup” on the dishdrying rack; it must have slid off when he was doing dishes and put silverware in there.

I lost an autographed (with a personalization to me) cookbook from Alton Brown, and tore up parts of the house looking for it. My sister had once lived with someone who had a sibling who worked on Brown’s show, and they worked together to get a cookbook autographed for me, for my birthday. It was one of the neatest presents I’d ever received because of how much thought was put into finding something I’d like. I found it only a few months ago, after it being missing for probably a year or more; for some reason I’d put it in the shelf under an old printer cart, and then that cart got stuffed - backwards, so the shelf was concealed - in a corner. I have no idea why I would have put a cookbook or those other books there.

Or it might be a sign that you should take the one you like to a jeweler and get it fixed.

My wedding ring has just been GONE for about a year. I figured that it slipped off my finger in bed, as I move around a lot in bed, but I haven’t found it yet. No financial value, just sentimental, but shit, how many places can it be??

Joe