One of the variety of great things to happen while I was in Florida was a visit to my home by one or more burglars unknown. They came in through the kitchen window, made off with the visible laptops and made a royal mess of things. Since I was away, nearly all of my stuff was with me, and therefore not available for their thieving. Interestingly, I’d come over all paranoid and been locking Scarab (the current netbook) in the hotel safe despite not normally worrying about that sort of thing in hotels.
Don and Sylvie lost a great deal. From what they could tell before I got home, all I’d lost was Ifrit, the netbook I haven’t been using regularly since the TSA cracked her case. We couldn’t be sure, though, until I came home and did an inspection.
Don and I have been burgled before – our apartment in Chicago was broken into and the burglars cleaned us out. Those burglars and these had a few things in common; both sets seemed fascinated by my sparring gear and took some amusement in scattering it around. Also, both stole rather inexplicable things.
In a fit of over reactive spoilerage over spring break, my mother had bought me every scent of Salon Selectives shampoo available from Target. The Chicago burglars stole all of the floral scents, leaving behind only a citrus orange bottle and a cucumber melon. We snicker about that to this day.
Madison burglars, I am amused to report, have outdone their Chciago counterparts. I came home to do an inventory of my stuff and after looking for all of the ovcious electronics, and checking to make sure they hadn’t made off with any of my books, had concluded that my losses were limited to Ifrit and any semblance of organization to the paperwork in my office.
I started going through the clothes strewn on my floor when it occurred to me to see if they’d riffled my underwear drawer. They hadn’t much. They had, however, done a number on the drawer under it, where I keep (rarely used) pajamas. And here I discovered the only other thing I’ve found missing, not my black handcuffs in the cabinet they left hanging open. Not the bottle of lube in plain site. No, they took, from its neglected nook in my pajama drawer, a thoroughly unremarkable black vibrator.
I’m really looking forward to calling the police and adding that to their report.
Anaea Lay 