update/explanation

We returned from a really great and computer-free weekend skiing in Utah* to find our house burgled.  No visible damage apart from even greater untidyness than usual and the loss of some emotionally and otherwise significant item: most of my jewelry is gone; G's and my laptops are both gone; you get the picture.  They ignored the outdated (and quite bulky) desktop computers, TV, and stereo, and rifled through many drawers to relatively little avail.  (We just don't have all that much -- apart from the abovementioned laptops and jewelry -- that's of much value.  Unfortunately for us, it turns out that the items most valuable to the pawn shop are also the items that transcend monetary value for us.  Those two computers, man, ...)

So if blogging is light in the next couple of weeks, blame the burglars -- and understand that I am trying to reconstruct the last two-and-a-half years' of work.  Much of it was backed up, but some of that was on the thumb drive hiding sneakily in a pocket of my computer backpack, which they swiped (I assume to carry the loot in).  It got stuck when they dumped the rest of my things (library book, notebook, pens).

Back up your work.  And keep your jewelry in a strange place -- although given the number of drawers they rifled through, I can't for the life of me think of what a strange place might be.

* Two happy notes: Squiss was *amazing* and by the end of the trip had taken the chair to the top of the mountain and skied down some blue runs.  Tricksy has discovered her first rock star.  We went with the Transmogrification clan, and she screamed "Truck! Truck! Truck!" every time she saw him.  I think that I have to change his handle now.

Comments

[dr]

We were gone for four days, so there's no telling precisely when it happened. They seem to have both entered and exited through back doors -- it's pretty easy to get around to the back of our house, and after that no one would really see anything. Our back gate opens onto a busy street, and they pretty clearly left the property there.

I don't know where to tell you to hide the jewelry. They don't seem to have gone into our kitchen at all, so perhaps the freezer is still safe. Or perhaps buried in little-worn shoes. I haven't yet figured out what I'm going to do -- in part because any place where the stuff would be effectively hidden would also be incredibly inconvenient if I want to put something on in a rush.

We're getting an alarm system, which we'll use at the very least when we're away. And our town provides a service: if you're going away, you can fill out a form asking the police to swing by and check on things (like peering in windows) every day. When we're away for longer, we might take advantage of that.

[Oonae]

I'm sure many initial responses to this post are going off-blog, as mine did. But for public consumption I'll say that I'd love to hear more, if you're interested to write it. I'm trying to draw lessons for myself: back-up my data and put my jewelery where? is the freezer still good? But I'm curious to know what time of day they came, and how they got in. The place where I'm living right now is on the intersection of a main road and a quiet side-street. This spells danger to me. I'm wondering whether extra locks would give me more protection, or be useless. Are you considering more security?

[dr four eyes]

Oh no! So sorry to hear about this!