Who knows, maybe it was foreshadowing. Wednesday night, packing for our trip to New York, I opened my closet to find that a shelf and the entire clothing rack had collapsed to the floor.

On the way down to Madison, where Mathias would be residing with friends and family while Lisa and I were in NYC, I realized I’d forgotten my headphones, so I picked up a pair along the way. On Friday’s flight to New York, I learned they didn’t work.

The trip in from LGA was delayed when someone snuck onto our bus. On the short walk to our hotel my shorts spontaneously ripped, releasing my phone to the hostile pavement below. That in itself sucked, but what sucked more was the phone getting lodged under the wheels of my suitcase and getting dragged five feet before what I realized what was happening. The phone still worked, but now looked like I’d been using for three years, not three months.

Our hotel turned out to be nice. Unfortunately, Priceline signed us up for a smoking room, and no other rooms were available. This was our first attempt using Priceline, and it will be our last.

Later in the evening, the Yankees game we were headed to was delayed by a tornado warning. “Hen egg-size” hail–that’s a real designation–was reported in nearby cities.

Working on plans for Saturday, I found that an automatic Windows Update had bonked the wireless on my computer. Lisa, reasonably thinking I’d have Internet access on the trip, left the library books she’d picked up on New York back in Madison. As a result, we found ourselves relying on my Treo and the $.20/minute Internet access in our hotel’s lobby.

While all of this was going on, we found ourselves involved in a ridiculous game of phone tag with Laura and Ted. I can call it ridiculous as we called them a number of times, they called us a number of times, and not only did our cell-to-cell calls not connect, but our voicemails didn’t get delivered, either. (Well they didn’t right away, at least. As soon as we landed back in Madison, Lisa turned on her phone, and, ding, two day-old messages from Laura. WTF, Sprint?)

To top things off, a pocket button on my second pair of shorts—shorts of a similar design to the ones that ripped on Friday—went AWOL on Saturday. I wouldn’t care about that much, except that my phone apparently decided to follow it, and at this time may still be riding the D train. I’ve talked to a number of friendly MTA employees since then, and while I’ve heard a number of times that personal items like phones are recovered “more often than you’d expect,” we won’t know for sure until next week, as it usually takes 7-10 business days for small items to make it to the lost and found department.

So, in all, it probably wasn’t our most successful vacation. That doesn’t mean I regret us going, though. More on that later.