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.