In the land of the absurd, the most absurd thing has happened.  Last evening we entertained our German friends for dinner.  Mom and kids arrived first with dad arriving from work an hour later.  When he came to the door he was carrying a license plate.  To be precise it was his wife's license plate from her German registered car parked in the lot in front of our condos.  He said he found it on the ground beside her car and he blamed her for having scraped it off or having hit something.  She denied it and thus ensued a "discussion" that led to the two of them and GP stomping outside to prove who was right.  What they discovered is that in the hour she had been here before hubby arrived someone had removed both of her plates and stolen the plastic rims from around them.  Whaaaaat?  The rims or frames are worth pennies, so it wasn't for money.  The perpetrators damaged nothing, (in fact they must have had a screwdriver), so it wasn't vandalism or anti-Germanism.  It happened in a quiet, out of the way, suburb where no one who doesn't live here passes.  Who the, what the, why the.....?  xxoo me