A Meme Project and a Little Story Called "Someone Robbed Me"

Alright, so I'm not sure exactly how exactly this is working (because it's late at night and I'm tired and I basically just skimmed the project information) but apparently a graduate student is doing a project to figure out how quickly memes travel around the blog world. And since I came across the project on someone's blog today, I figure it would be skewing his results ever-so-slightly if I didn't acknowledge that I'd seen it. Plus he told readers to " Relate sob stories about poor graduate students in desperate circumstances. Imply I'm one of them." And since about half the time that describes me as well (especially as Ph.D. application deadlines and the end of the semester loom) I figured the least I could do was link to his page and play along.

So here. Check this out. Contribute to the experiment.

And now I have a question for you: What do a digital camera, a set of five pound weights, and a package of rainbow-colored Sharpies have in common? If you answered, "Well, Ashley, they are all things that were stolen out of your apartment last week while you were out of town!" then you win the prize.
Yeah. Apparently someone came in here and took stuff while I was staying in Austin. It took me a while to realize it, and to convince myself that I'm not just crazy, but now I'm positive that someone broke in here. I know, I know. You're rolling your eyes and saying, "Come on, surely you just misplaced those random things." But hear me out.

Let me set this up by reminding you all that I am almost freakishly organized. I have a very little apartment, and it is a very neat and organized apartment. I'm a "place for everything and everything in its place" kinda girl. I straighten up as I go, or at the very least straighten up the apartment every night before going to bed. This is not an apartment where it is easy for stuff to go missing. Which is not to say I don't misplace things once in a while, but...

Monday night I used my digital camera here at the house to upload Cohen's Christmas card pictures and my pictures from Ohio. That was the last time I used/saw the camera. On Tuesday evening after work I drove up to Austin. From that point until last night (Monday), I was only in my apartment for five to ten minutes at a time every other day or so. I'd come in with my duffel bag, toss my dirty clothes into the hamper, grab some clean clothes, and then head back to Austin. To anyone watching my apartment, it would have been obvious I was out of town.
Saturday afternoon after work I stopped by the apartment to grab some clean clothes and get my camera to take it to the concert. That's when I discovered my camera wasn't in its usual drawer. I didn't think anything of it at the time, though. I just assumed I must have misplaced it somewhere else in the apartment or thrown it into one of my bags and taken it to Chelsea's house with me for some reason (maybe I wanted to take pictures of the dogs? I didn't know, but it was entirely possible it was already at Chelsea's). When I got back to Chelsea's I searched all my bags for my camera, but it wasn't there. Oh well, I thought, it has to be somewhere in the apartment because you used it on Monday night.
So last night I finally got home for good, and the first thing I did after unpacking was search for the digital camera, which was nowhere to be found. Still, I didn't look EVERYWHERE everywhere, so I figured I was just overlooking it somehow. I once misplaced a battery charger for several months, so it is possible. I wasn't worried. But then I went to get my Sharpies so that I could mark my calendar. [Pause for a moment and keep in mind that I am a huge dork before you continue reading. Ready? Okay.] I have this package of rainbow-colored Sharpies, and I use them for one thing and one thing only: putting a star on my wall calendar on the days I work out. I don't use these Sharpies for anything else. I don't take them anywhere, I don't do other projects with them, they stay in my desk drawer unless I'm using one to mark my calendar. So I was puzzled when I went to mark off the days I'd worked out in Austin on my calendar and my Sharpies were missing. Huh. I knew I wouldn't have taken those somewhere with me, but I thought maybe they'd gotten stuck in the back of the drawer or I'd grabbed them and carried them into the bathroom or kitchen and gotten distracted and put them down, blah, blah, blah. I searched around a bit but gave up and went to bed, sans camera and markers but not all that worried about it.
Then today after work I decided to search for my camera AGAIN. I couldn't shake the thought that I was just not looking carefully and missing it (I'm notorious for missing things right in front of my face, so I still figured it was just my own stupidity at this point). I began by thoroughly searching the camera drawer, and that's when it dawned on me for the first time that the cord I use to upload the pictures to my computer was missing. And that's when I got chills for the first time, because here's the thing: there is absolutely no reason in the world why I would have taken that cord anywhere. There's just not. The fact that the cord was missing, too, made me realize that someone must have taken the camera. So I called my dad, because I needed someone to tell me that I'm crazy and stupid and had obviously just misplaced the camera somewhere and was overreacting. But instead Dad said, "File a police report." And I said, "What if I file a police report and then find the camera somewhere totally random three weeks from now?" and Dad said, "That happens. Don't worry about it. File the report."
But I felt so stupid. I mean, the only things missing were a digital camera and a set of markers, I figured the police would just laugh and assume (probably rightly) that I'd just misplaced my own stuff and was an idiot. After all, there was absolutely no sign of a forced entry. There was no sign that any of my things had been rifled through. And why wouldn't the burglar have taken anything else from the house? (I still don't have a good explanation for this, other than the fact that thankfully every other small, valuable, easy to steal and conceal thing that I own--my mp3 player, my cell phone, my laptop, my nice rings--were in Austin with me, and I guess the burglar didn't like my taste in DVDs).
Anyway, I talked to Mike to get his opinion, and while I was talking to him about whether or not I should call the cops he triggered a memory and I realized that last night when I'd gotten home the drawer to my bedside table was lying on the floor. Now, it's a rickety drawer. It does fall out once in a while, and that's why I didn't really think anything of it last night. But it has never fallen out on its own, ever. It has only fallen out when I've been trying to open it. And it's sort of tricky to jimmy it back into place once it has fallen out, so I guess the person must have broken it and been unable to get it back and and just had to leave it lying there (because other than that, the entire apartment looked perfectly normal) So basically, the drawer alone wouldn't be suspicious, but the broken drawer along with the missing items was enough for me to call the police.
So I called the police and filed a report and talked to some people in the apartment office (although not the manager, since she was already gone for the day). I was still feeling like I could have been panicking about nothing, though, until I went to work out a couple of hours ago. I went in my closet to get my weights, and they're missing, too. And that was my 100% positive sign that someone broke into this apartment. Because as much as there's no reason that I would take the camera cord or the markers out of this apartment, there is absolutely ZERO reason at all whatsoever that those weights would be anywhere but their spot in my closet.

So yes. Someone broke in here and stole from me for sure. And the worst part is that there was no sign of a break in. I came home to an apartment that was as fully locked and burglar-barred as it had been when I left it. Which means that whoever came in here is someone that works here, someone with a key (I've never made a spare key, so the only people that have one are me and the apartment complex office). I just feel so betrayed, especially since this is a small apartment complex and I chat daily with both maintenance men and the women that work in the office. I'd hate to think that someone who loves on Cohen and chats with me every day stole from my apartment, but there's really no other explanation.

I'm going to talk to the apartment manager tomorrow, but I'm not sure she can do anything. I don't think I can legally change my locks and not let them have a copy of the key (can I?). I just want her to figure out which one of her employees broke in here. If she can't do that, she needs to figure out some way to make me feel safe in this apartment. I'm not big on the idea of breaking my lease and moving at this point, but I'm also not big on the idea of staying here as long as I know that someone untrustworthy has access to my key and can come in at any time.

Ugh.

I tried to make myself feel better by decorating my apartment for Christmas instead of the school-related stuff I should have been doing. And it mostly worked. My apartment kind of looks like Christmas threw up all over it, but it's very cheery. I'm happy that I'll be able to enjoy my decorations for the next two weeks. I love Christmas. I would take pictures and post them, except, hey, I don't have a camera anymore! My mom said that she'd get me a new camera for Christmas, which is wonderful because I'd started entertaining the thought of buying myself a new camera anyway, but this isn't the way I wanted to get one.

Finally, I'm getting a little annoyed with the whole PC, "Happy Holidays" thing. I get that not everyone celebrates Christmas and it's nice to ere on the safe side, but it's getting out of hand. This evening at Target I bought a mini Christmas tree, four new ornaments (one of which was an angel), and a box of candy canes, and as I finished checking out the cashier said, "Happy Holiday!" Happy holiday. Lady, there is a CHRISTMAS TREE, a BOX OF CANDY CANES, and an ANGEL ORNAMENT in my cart. I may be mistaken, but I think you can be safe in assuming that regardless of whether or not I am actually a Christian, I am planning to celebrate CHRISTMAS, and you can express appropriate wishes.

It's a crazy world.