For Christmas I want a car alarm...attached to a new car.

Last night I went to the Chocolate Bar. A place that, due to its owners and issues I have with them from when I was a pastry chef, I swore I would never go to. But, Leah is in town and she was there along with Esther, Gina, Julie (I think this is her blog...I stole the link from Leah's blog...), and Mary (who still needs a blog of her own.) So, I gave up my petty boycott and Amy and I drove down to Chippewa.

Before we left I joked, "let's take my car...maybe someone will steal it and I can get a new one."

We parked on Elmwood just south of Chippewa. There were lots of cars on the street and we've parked there before. It was well lit and fairly well populated - and not by scary people, either...by normal-looking people. When we were getting out of the car I grabbed the portable part of my Sirius radio for some reason. I normally don't, but I put it in my purse.

After one of the best cocoa puff milkshakes I've ever had (ok, the ONLY cocoa puff milkshake I've ever had, but, really, it was awesome), and some really great conversation, we left.

My front passenger-side window was smashed. The stereo was gone (with my new Plain White T's cd in it.) My iPod was gone. The full can of diet coke that I had to drink on the drive home was gone (well, at least emptied onto my backseat.) Amy scraped the glass off the front seat and I called my dad. We decided there was no point in reporting it...I've had this happen before and it just takes time - waiting for the police to show up, waiting for them to do paper work, etc - and there's not much they can do. Amy and I spent the drive home telling each other that it could have been worse. We could have been in the car, they could have taken my Sirius attachment instead of just pulling it off so it needed to be re-attached, and stealing the remote control for it (really...they took the remote control for it, but no other part.) They could have taken my cds (although, as Esther pointed out, no one likes Melissa Ethridge anymore now than they did last year when all my stuff, except my cds, was taken out of my car.) They could have taken the whole car. I could have not just put the new cd into the cd player, and they could have taken the cd Mike made me (the sister mix) that I had been listening to up until just the other day. There are a million and two ways it could have been worse. Sitting on the glass stuck in the seat for the few minutes it took to get home wasn't so bad.

I spent today getting the window replaced, getting a new stereo installed, and cleaning out the car. I found the full can of diet coke, so I don't know what was poured on the backseat. Most likely one of the other cans of diet coke in the car, but, I sprayed a lot of lysol in there...just in case it's not diet coke...