*&@#!!

This turned out to be a truly crappy day. Between the time I left for work at 11:15 a.m. (yeah, late, but I'm still on California time and didn't have an appointment until 1:30) and when my wife got home at 2:30, some kid, or pair of kids, broke a rear window, entered and ransacked our house, and stole her new cell phone and my not-so-new digital camera that had 50-60 photos from San Francisco that I hadn't downloaded anywhere.

I'd give him the camera if I could get the memory card with the photos back. I don't even care about the scenic shots, just the photos of Megan and Conor, and Megan and her mother. The [bleep] also stole the extra key to the new car, so Nissan is going to re-key the car. He took a house key, so a locksmith will be here tomorrow. You can't get a window guy to come out to replace one pane of glass so I'm taking at least half a day off to repair the broken window in addition to cleaning up the mess.

Good news: The cops got some good fingerprints including a set the tech called "juicy."

The [bleep] didn't find my father's .380 automatic or my grandfather's old revolver, which is good because if they ever catch the [bleep] I'd like to have target practice on his hind end although the cops might take a dim view of that. It isn't so much the sense of being violated as the aggravation of having to clean up the mess.

It was interesting what he didn't take - he wasn't interested in baseball cards or wine from Napa Valley or what's left of a bottle of tequila or this computer or the TV set or a few other goodies that were more or less hiding in plain sight. Oh, yeah, one more project for tomorrow morning is to open a safe deposit box for all the stuff he overlooked. The cops figure it was a kid looking for cash. Fortunately, we don't own much worth stealing. I don't expect the kid to return because he seems to have spent a lot of time and effort for nothing special. The camera can't be worth much on the street and the cell phone is your basic upgrade without all the fancy bells and whistles. Hmmm. . .I don't see Megan's ancient lap-top. Did I toss it like I was told to or did the kid steal it? I hope he stole it, because whoever buys it will come back and beat him senseless.

And this is certainly a great way to get into the Christmas season.