Update on the thief

Crystal Bennett. That is the girl's name. Using her fingerprints, WUPD was able to find her in a criminal database, because of course she's stolen stuff before. And quickly, they were able to discover she had pawned a Flip video camera the same day mine was stolen. Thankfully Kevin was able to find the serial number of my Flip from looking at the videos on my computer, and we could prove it was mine. So last Friday, I went with the cop to the pawnshop to get my Flip. Of course, nothing is ever easy, and we couldn't get it without some legal notarized document. Or I could pay $30 for it.....um, no. So the plan was to go back on Monday with the document to get it.
Monday afternoon the detective finally called to tell me he was going home sick, but had just come home from the police station in the city where he talked with Ms. Bennett, because she had turned herself in. She wasn't very cooperative apparently, and the detective wasn't in a good mood because he was sick. Among other things, he seized her clothes because she happened to be wearing the same thing she had on on the day she stole stuff at the med school and was caught on a surveillance camera. Hilarious! She said she had a lawyer and wouldn't talk about anything til he was there. Anyway, finally yesterday the detective called me and said we could go back to the pawn shop. So we went. This time there were a number of people in there, who knows....maybe some of them were selling stolen stuff too. But they looked at us like they were crapping their pants, presumably because of the cop and not because we were white, but that was part of it too in this part of town. But we were in and out of there with my Flip in less than 2 minutes. The detective told me I should give up any hope of ever getting my digital camera back, so hopefully this weekend we can get a new one. He told me that once this finally goes to trial, that I will be invited to the sentencing and I can ask for money for my camera, and will probably get it. So I look forward to that.....
In the meantime, still no pictures. We used up all the memory on the memory cards of my ghetto camera which I can't delete pictures from - which was why I bought a new camera - to take the christmas card picture. So hopefully you've gotten that or will get it soon! And videos to come soon....maybe I can get Gus laughing at someone barking soon.....

Feeling a little violated

I had expected my next blog post would be filled with cute family pictures. We took some good ones over the weekend, first when we cut down our Christmas tree, and then when we took Gus to walk on the new I64 before it opened to traffic. They were good pictures too!
Probably everyone knows by now that my purse got stolen Monday from Wash U. A girl was just wandering around and in and out of labs, and unfortunately she saw my purse. Lauren, a tech in the lab, saw the girl walk out of the lab and she confronted her because she didn't belong. The girl had a story, of course, about how she was looking for someone that was supposed to tutor her. She even used the phone in the lab, supposedly trying to contact this person. Lauren could tell the number she dialed wasn't real though, because she could hear beeping on the other end. So as soon as this girl wandered off, Lauren called the campus police. Lauren had also closed and locked the office where we keep our stuff immediately while she tried to follow the girl to see where she went. Anyway, so a little bit later, I see Lauren talking with the cop and describing this girl (orange coat, purple braids....how inconspicuous...) and I went to borrow someone else's keys to open up the office because mine and Lauren's keys were locked in. And of course, I opened the door and saw my purse was gone. I had recently switched purses, otherwise Lauren would have known this girl was carrying my purse while she was confronting her. So at this point, I'm talking to the cop describing my purse and its contents, when I get a call on my cell phone (this all is happening in about 15 minutes), and its a Wash U number so I tell the cop I'm going to take the call. It was someone from engineering - they had found my purse in a stairwell across campus. So the cop and I went over there to get my purse. It was mostly intact - she had left my wallet, and had only taken the cash and even the change, but she had also taken my digital camera and my flip video camera. So anyway, I'm grateful that I got this much back. I'm also grateful that she didn't take my breastpump (she probably didn't know it was worth more than my camera, haha), and that I had my phone in my pocket, and that my laptop wasn't there. I would be a little more lost without those things. I'm also grateful that the Wash U police are actually investigating this. They came to our lab and got fingerprints off the phone (as well as off the phone from another person's office where she used the phone, I guess she was wandering suspiciously and they let her use their phone too). They also have her on a security camera at the med school and Lauren is sure its her. And Lauren worked with the cops to come up with a composite sketch. This is all pretty awesome and impressive, considering in the city if your car gets stolen they don't even investigate. So I hope they at least have enough information on this girl that they can catch her, even though my cameras have probably long been sold to buy drugs.
If its possible, I think Kevin is even more upset about this than I am. He was really proud of the pictures we took on the highway, and it was even his idea to go out there that day to take pictures. So he's scouting craigslist and even talking about going to pawn shops to see if he can find my stuff back. I don't think there's much hope, but I guess you never know.
So there you go. No pictures for awhile. Hopefully we can borrow someone's camera soon though because we need to take the picture for our Christmas card. In the two evenings since I've been cameraless, its been depressing, because Gus is always doing things that I think about getting the camera out for. So sad.

Quite an experience

Last night Kevin and I took Gus to get his Christmas pictures taken. I was a little nervous about it, just because Gus is always so happy and smiley, I figured the one time we paid someone to take pictures of him that he would be crabby. But everything went more or less ok. The biggest problem was that his outfit was black and gray, and the only shoes he has are brown. Last year for John's Christmas pics, Jenny just had socks on him, and everyone gave her a lot of grief for that. But I decided to just go with the socks and deal with it. Anyway, the photographer was pretty weird (I guess that's a given). We tried putting Gus in a couple chairs, but he always stretched his legs out straight and kind of leaned over. They even had the exact same chair that was in John's picture last year. They also put him in a box like he was a present, but again he just wanted to stretch his legs straight, and the round box looked more like an oval. So the 'Christmas-themed' pictures were all just a little weird. Anyway, here's the ones I ended up ordering...and thankfully the shoe/sock debate ended up not being a problem! Unfortunately Gus was a little drooly in the portrait picture, but its still decent.
And thanks mom for the cute outfit!!!!!