What did I tell you about the preserves?

I am sitting here in my office finishing prepping for a wedding tomorrow and finishing files from last weeks shoots before running off to crash for the night, when I hear my garage door open. Strange...Kirk is playing GTA in the living room. That's odd.

Being a big scaredy cat, I insist Kirk put on pants and go do the manly investigate and protect the homestead thing. He goes grudgingly enough and checks the garage.

He makes it out to the garage just in time for the neighbor to tell us the guy went that-a-way on a bike.

Crap.

They knifed my top, smoke something disgusting in my car and opened my garage. On further examination, my garage door opener is gone, along with Kirk's jacket, and my tripod (doubt the guy even knows what it was..it was in a black canvas bag.) and whatever else I have not taken a mental inventory of yet...there was not much in there. Luckily he was kind enough to leave my reflector for my shoot tomorrow and my gate opener. Thanks guy.

Visibly shaken, I call the police while Kirk is sure to touch everything so prints are fucking useless. I know he was just trying to access the damage...but wow. My CD book (haha all lame mix tapes...except the awesome one Kirk made me and played while we took a drive the night he proposed. I would have cried if the mean guy had taken it.) was kindly left strewn at the foot of the driveway when the dude discovered there was nothing awesome in it.

I am starting to be glad that I brought all the mothers day stuff in with me after finishing shopping today.

So...now there are at least three mesa pd cars canvassing the area, several officers on foot too. They must be bored tonight.

This is incredibly upsetting. We chose this neighborhood for a reason. Granted, east Mesa isn't all rainbows and sunshine, but the area near us is new and shiny. We chose a gated community.

In the last 10 months we have lived in this home, we have had one of our neighbors have a catburgular (the helecopter search and thirty three cars were awesome at 1am...they searched our yard too), two incidences where the gates were intentionally rammed and damaged and the now two times my car has been vandalized/burglarized. I firmly plant blame with the HOA, who can not seem to keep the gates in working order for more than a couple of days, leaving the neighborhood exposed. As we are one of the first homes in the neighborhood, well...it sucks worst for us.

Just for fun, while we wait for the officers to do whatever it is they do, lets talk about Lane family car incidents past:

There was the infamous Corsica Bandit, who upon breaking into the piece of crap through a back window, discovered there was not so much as a stray penny in sight, and then in his disappointment in his failure, left us a lovely flashlight, which we still use.

There was the sexual harassment coward, who after filing a complaint because he would walk by and grab my tush at work was subsequently fired, and subsequently covered my toyota in brown paint while I was out of town. Way to go dude. He also shot out my windows. Classy.

There was the preserves incident.

There was the time Scott left the car running while getting something from a lady friend, only to discover it was taken for joyriding. It was later found. His fault, but still.

The moron who attempted to get into Kirks truck for the stereo but instead ended up just bending the mirror and scoring a little bit of glass near the lock. Had he managed to cut the glass, it would have done no good...the rectangle he scored out was too small to stick fingers through without leaving a bloody mess in his wake.

Update: Officers think they got the guy. Go Mesa PD! They have been awesome everytime we have needed them...from simple reports, to figuring out what was up with the helicopter searching our yard at 1am an identity theft issue and this, they have been nothing but kind, caring, curteous and awesome. Checking his stuff right now to see if he has anything of mine. If so, I am soooo pressing charges. I wonder if I can press charges for him ruining my bed time too...

The exciting conclusion....

They found a guy with all our stuff, except my tripod's bag which he likely dumped somewhere. Got my stuff back, officers can't be sure the guy is the one who broke in (um, guys, hes shady and has my stuff like 20 min later...what do you think, he was just out for a stroll at 1am?). They were here until the early hours of the morning dusting for prints and processing my driveway...er the crime scene.

At least I got my stuff back. Case is still open and I got a healthy two hours of sleep!