Well somebody out there has your iPod as well. So, you know, one of those brothers and sisters is now walking around a compound with the white buds hanging out of their ears.

I feel a mass of iPods about to be stolen. Watch out now!

You are lucky!

I had my car broken into they smashed the window, cut up the dash, leather seats and my seat belts and only took the radio, but why all that damage just for the radio? It was a $4,500 insurance claim.

I was just thinking about you today. My friend is currently in the hospital, blogging her way through childbirth. (She is, of course, on the receiving end of a most benevolent epidural.) Every so often, I'll get messages on gmail chat with centimeters and how many bottles of booze are currently chilling in the fridge for later. It's brilliant. It seemed like something you'd do.

Not like Philadelphia which has the most wonderful honest citizens.

I was going to Disney World a few years back and I was leaving from an airport in Phillie. I got there very late the night before so I wouldn't have to drive so much the day of the trip.

The next morning I woke up and could not find my car keys. The other people I was traveling with all helped me look and we could not find the keys! We decided to go outside to check and see if I locked them in the car.

No. I left my car keys in the car door of my car with THE DOORS OPEN! We had all of our luggage in the care for the trip including three of my coach purse one of which held all my spending money and credit cards for the entire trip.

It was all there! All of it. Keys still in door, door still open. In a crowded parking lot. In Philadelphia. Overnight!

I know I just got really lucky, but still. I always did think Philadelphia was a lovely city.

I had my spare tire cover(I drove a Jeep), some home-made tapes(it was the 80's) and my cigarette lighter stolen when I lived in Tucson. Off all things, my in-dash cigarette lighter. What the hell can you even do with an in-dash cigarette ligther without the dashboard?

My boyfriend had his ipod stolen off of the counter of the record store where he works while he was sitting at said counter. Granted, grabbing that ipod was stealing a whole lot more music than the thief ever could have fit under his shirt, but COME ON-- a whole store full of crap you can steal and you steal the ONE THING that belongs to the employee who makes six bucks an hour? How unconcerned with the proletariat was that thief!

Heather,
When my husband's Jeep Wrangler was broken into a few years ago, the stereo was stolen. And all of his CDs. The music that the thieves received for all their hard work? Christian gospel and Drum and Bugle Corps. Teehee!

Dooce, making commenting a PITA for everyone. :D I had a very similar experience many years ago, except when they stole the face plate, the stereo was literally just laying in the space where it belongs. I hadn't had it installed it was just plugged in, all they had to do was pull. That and they stole about 50 cd's that I had burned really weird mixes on. Did you know it's a huge pain to replace a face plate? I never did, but I tried calling the place I bought it, then the company, even the internet. Nothing.

Thieves suck. :( A very good friend of mine had her house broken into this past week - they stole all her jewelry and perfume, her vacuum and DVD player, and a bottle of Hypnotique. The jewelry is comprised mostly of unique artsy pieces, the perfume bottles were mostly at some level of used, and the vacuum was not even a good one. They left the computer and other electronics. Odd world we live in, and it still sucks that people would go through your stuff.

I just obtained a typekey account to tell you about the most thoughtful thief/theives I have personally known of, as well as to divulge some information about myself that probably should stay in the past. Something is really strange about that.

Anyway, in the early 90's in Louisville, my "champagne gold" 1985 Camaro (go ahead, I'll wait...) was stolen from the street in front of my apartment.

About a week later it was recovered. Gone were all my tapes (yes, cassettes in the early 90's...I'll wait again), my rear speakers, the stereo itself, and the little "good luck" thing that dangled from my rearview mirror.

If you've just concluded that I was a total redneck, I guess that's fair. But I'll have you know there was no gun rack.

So I go to the impound lot to give THEM $72 to get my car back, and I find the Camaro there with a broken driver's side window, broken steering column, and a 6-inch long deep scratch down the rear fender.

Which had been TOUCHED UP with paint that was only slightly too dark. At least they tried!

We live in Houston, and I've stopped replacing my driver's side lock. I have a few blissful months of not having to get in on the passenger side, and then someone breaks it again.

But I have two hilarious stories from Minneapolis.

1. My insomniac husband caught some people trying to steal the car next door. They couldn't figure out why the care wouldn't start. The engine was on blocks right next to the car.

2. My car was stolen from the YWCA. It was my fault--my keys were in my coat pocket hanging in the coat room. The cops recovered my car--the thieves were kind enough to fill up my tank with gas! It was on empty when they stole it. We had the entire car detailed because they smoked cheap cigars in it, but I would have wanted to anyway because I felt so violated.

I, too, had just a faceplate stolen. But my stereo wasn't padlocked to my dashboard when it happened. It wasn't even held in place with molding because I am just that cheap. But then again, unplugging something takes time and effort, and when you make a living off pawning car stereo faceplates, you've gotta work fast or there's no dinner on the table. Here's an excerpt from the blog I wrote when it happened to me. It's pretty much the same as yours. P.S. I call my car "Treasure":

"I returned to [my car] the next evening to find his insides all amuck. Glove compartment and console hastily ripped open, objects askew, sunblocking shield carelessly shoved aside, key hole clearly fidgeted with, and last but certainly the LEAST acceptable atrocity - stereo face missing. Just the face, mind you. Treasure's stereo still sits comfortably in its little nook below the temperature dials, but its face is missing, making it impossible to turn on and/or listen to any form of music. Treasure LOVES music. I'm thinking of faxing in a photo of my JVC CD stereo faceplate to the milk-carton makers. That stereo face was like a nanny to Treasure, and he's depleted and grumbly as ever these days...

... [extended pause for blog-reader mourning] ..."

An addendum to this story is that I later replaced the faceplate with one from e-bay, and probably got my original back.

so for years i lived in this gentrifying neighborhood in baltimore. the more it gentrified, the more property crime we had. which made sense to me - if i wanted to steal something good, i'd walk three blocks from the abandonded houses over to where the $400,000 houses were too.

of course i had a 10 year old car literally held together with drywall screws and duct tape. so - who's car do they pick to break into - the lovely mercedes with the car alarm - no, the smelly old nasty car - my car. once a year my radio got stolen.

then i got a ten year old jeep wrangler with a soft top. that way folks would stop breaking my windows. yeah, even though i left it unlocked, some idiot still cut open the soft top (try the damn doors!), stole the face plate off the radio and then tried to steal a tire. not the one on the back, one of the wheels - you know, the ones on the ground.

shortly after that i moved to a different neighborhood in baltimore. more middle class. less attractive for thieves. that was three years ago. i still haven't bothered to replace the radio. i sing instead. which is really too bad for folks parked near me at stop lights....

Oh YES, the worst part is the feeling of violation, the KNOWING that someone's been pawing through all your stuff. When I live in a vaguely sketchy part of Charleston, South Carolina (so sketchy that the people DIDN'T MATCH THEIR PURSES TO THEIR SHOES), my Jeep Wrangler was broken into repeatedly -- mostly by someone slashing the plastic window with a pocketknife. And I know when you have a plastic window, you're sort of asking for it, but REALLY, could they not have slashed the SAME window when they broke in again -- or just peeled the duct tape off perhaps? -- rather than slashing a whole new window? I lost a lot of CDs in those few years, I'll tell you. And used a lot of duct tape. (Also valium.)

Now that we live in San Francisco, we've had our satellite radio stolen twice in four months --- no wires, JUST THE RADIO, which is no use to anyone. The last laugh is on the thieves though -- the most recent time they broke in, my boyfriend's super expensive camera lens was sitting on the back seat. Perhaps they didn't know what it was, but it was still sitting there perfectly untouched the next morning. The satellite radio, however, was gone.

While sharing a house in San Francisco, my housemate's crappy old Datsun was broken into. She found her window smashed and a gaping hole in the dash where her radio once sat. It wasn't until a week later that she realized the would-be radio theif gave up on stealing her stereo when he (or she) got it wedged way back in the dash.

Funny thing was that the stereo still worked, you just had to reach your arm way back into the whole to change the radio station.