Scene of the Crime Leads To Surprising Conclusion

It's pretty quiet on the home front just now.

Pookie and Son-in-Grace are on a Harley motorcycle somewhere in Big Sur, Stu is back at work, and Emily Blue and Third Child are out shopping for a replacement radio for his car.

It appears that some time in the night, the Anti-Santa and his orcs helped themselves to the original. They also relieved TC of his short-wave radio from his emergency "Go" bag, his iPod, and an uber-cool teeny Bluetooth headset from the glove compartment.

Oddly enough, they left behind the brand new hiking GPS we bought him for Christmas and a year-old Bluetooth headset. We're guessing they were more "urban opportunist" hooligans than your back country, "Rocky Mountain Man" outdoorsy types. This character assessment was further developed by our crime assessment/grief counseling crew over some sympathy dim-sum.

Fact: they had also left behind a low-end sleeping bag, a pair of almost new rock-climbing shoes, and an ultra-light portable cooking stove.

Fact: also rejected from the thieves jolly red sack of stolen goods was a fetching straw cowboy hat left over from this year's Halloween festivities.

Fact: they also passed on a really urban-hip-cool Navy pea coat, one of TC's favorite garments. (Hey, not all facts fall neatly into place in any crime scene. We're still trying to figure out the pea coat and second Bluetooth headset....)

As the heat of the violation began to subside (somewhere around the second sticky rice), TC mused that thieves really should be more polite. "If I were a thief, I'd at least take the time to leave the connector wires behind so the original owner could hook up a new radio without having to rip the dashboard apart. Also, I'd leave a little note thanking them for all their stuff, and a list of the most compatible replacement radios for that brand of car. Also, a nice note wishing the car owners a Happier New Year, perhaps with a P.S. reminding that it is better to give than to receive." If it were me, I'd even consider bring a dust-buster along to tidy up all the mess that ripping a radio out of a dashboard creates. Anyway, he was right. Thieves don't have be rude. They're just choosing to be rude."

I love my kids.