So while we were enjoying our honeymoon, our house was burglarized.
We found out about it when we still had a few days left in Thailand. I received an email from my Father describing what had happened and what our friends were doing to secure what we had left. We are so lucky to have friends like Travis and Carrie. Between them and my parents, there was always someone staying at our house watching out for our interests.
The burglary occurred the night of October 17th, 2007. The perpetrators smashed in one of the back windows and took several items from our living room. Among them were a 42" Plasma Television, Video game systems with several accessories and games, the entire DVD collection, an LCD computer screen, mouse and keyboard and a replica Katana. That last item leads me to believe that it was done by kids. Most anyone would not have given the sword a second glance as they are relatively worthless. However, the ignorant eye of a thieving kid would look upon it and think "Wow, a real ninja sword!"
Some odd things strike me about the conditions in which the burglary occurred. The home security system was not armed at the time of the burglary. The petsitter reported that he had issues arming it and had to leave the house disarmed. When we returned from the honeymoon, we had no issues arming the alarm. To verify that nothing was wrong, we had a technician from the alarm company come out and do a full diagnostic. There were no issues found with the system.
Our dog, Chloe, was unharmed during the incident. If anything her barking probably discouraged the intruders from helping themselves to the other rooms of the house. Chloe is a boxer/bull mastiff mix and weighs about 100 lbs. One of the Atlanta Police Officers that came to fill out the report mentioned that the break-in probably wouldn't have occurred had she been out of her crate. Needless to say, Chloe is on patrol while we are away from the house now.
We are currently in the process of completing the Insurance claim forms so that we can replace some of the things that were lost. Unfortunately, my hours of work on the video game systems are all lost as the the progress was stored on the memory cards that were also taken.(end sarcasm) So far the insurance company has been very helpful so I hope the resolution of the claim will be equitable to the items lost.