Jacked. So to Speak.

Last weekend was great.  No one was sick, we all got good sleep, we didn't get any scary information from daycare implying our child has brain damage, we had our lease signed and set for our new place to live, and the weather was nice.  We actually went out to the park on Sunday afternoon like a normal family!  It was great.  We couldn't get over how awesome it was to just have a weekend with no drama or trauma for once.  One nice weekend since we've been here!  

I wondered if we were jinxing ourselves by talking about it out loud, and apparently we were.

I got home yesterday with a struggling child under one arm and a pile of coats and bags under the other, only to discover that our front door was wide open.  Further inspection showed that our back door was also wide open, as well as our garden gate.  After several hours of waiting around for campus security and then police to go in with guns drawn and secure the premises (as they say), we learned that--indeed--our laptops had been stolen, as well as TheLimey's toolbox (which was in the office, too.)  

The adjacent neighbor (it's a duplex, or some other name like that) actually saw the guy with the toolbox and asked what he was doing--"Just picking up some stuff."  Picking up indeed.  Maintenance is kind of casual around here, so he thought the guy was maintenance.  I kind of think that if the neighbor hadn't challenged him, he might have gone back inside again.  We theorize he made two trips because of the muddy bootprints on the carpet near the back. I'm writing on my work computer now, of course.

We were finally getting our affairs in order, moving from "desperate" through "urgent" and finally getting to "basic and important"--really for the first time since we'd gotten married.  

One of the things we finally did was to get the new drive ordered for....my laptop. So we could rebuild it in preparation for my using it to work on this summer.  I spent weeks and weeks waiting for that drive earlier this year, but this time it shipped the day we ordered it.  Pretty ironic that it will likely arrive today, the day after the laptop  was stolen, since we've been trying to do this rebuild for THREE YEARS!  Conveniently, I had gathered all the software (and the paperwork from my computer) together and clipped it with an office clip, and set it on our desk next to my laptop.  Because there it isn't, any more.  I hope that possibly Dell may have a record of what the serial number is, which I will go to see about in a minute.

One good thing about that, though, is that I backed up all my stuff to Dropbox.  Thank heavens.  Because I have exactly two more lines to edit on my dissertation before it's accepted for binding, as of last Friday. After that I can apply for graduation. Also because I realized this morning that Dropbox will tell me the last IP address where my computer was used online, as well as when.  Unfortunately I would have to delete all my files for another user to not be able to access them, which means that then I can't access them.  However, I have a feeling that whoever has it is probably not going to dig past my password into my files, but will simply wipe it for their own smug stolen-goods sales use.