Lesson Learned

Sunday night, Carrie fell into an exhausted sleep early. Shane was already down; It was 8:45 PM and I found myself with some free time.

I went around and started locking the house down. I opened the door to the garage and saw the garage door was up. I learned the hard way to always keep it closed in the winter, but this time I stopped. The weather was really nice. My wife was sleeping right above it.

"It's a good thing we live in such a safe neighborhood," I thought, and I decided that I'd leave the garage door open one night. Carrie had a busy week, a bum knee, and a surgery on May 6th to look forward to.

And that's how my work laptop was stolen.

The next morning, I got ready for work as usual. When I plopped down in my car, I noticed that the glove compartment and dashboard were open. "Huh," I thought," that's strange. I wonder if Carrie was looking for something."  

Other than that, the car looked like a mess as usual. Shane's TV was unplugged which was good; I didn't want to listen to Garbage Monsters on the way to work. I turned around to see if my work bag had fallen off the back seat. I'd brought it in Saturday to work on my resume, but when the battery started to die I packed it up and put it back in the car to be ready for work on Monday.

My work bag wasn't there.

This took all of a few seconds. At first, I was confused. I retraced my steps in my head. My work laptop should have been in back. I'd pulled out some coats and hung them up after I threw it in. I got out of the car and walked around to the passenger side to try a different angle. My suspicions were already growing when I tested the passenger side door; it wasn't shut. It was shut just enough to look fully shut.

That's when I knew I'd been robbed. I still felt discombobulated; It was like I'd misplaced something, but knew I hadn't. My bag should have been there. 

I went back inside and asked Carrie if she'd been out to the Prius. She said no, and I told her my work laptop had been stolen.

That was how my day started! I snapped a picture of the compartments all opened and then checked around for anything else missing. The Volvo was parked outside of the garage and still locked. I didn't see any power tools or anything of value missing otherwise (most of our power tools are all second and third hand anyway). 

From there, I went to work. The world doesn't stop turning and the school bells wouldn't stop wringing either. I reported my laptop stolen to the technology specialist and checked in with our school police officer to file an incident report. There wasn't much else to do. 

It played a little havoc with my day. Normally, I'm emailing parents, writing reports, and hooked up to a SMARTBoard. I went ahead and told my 2nd period it was stolen. Sometimes I think the kids learn more in those honest moments than they do in all the scripted lessons. I said it annoyed me. Then I said I was moving on! 

Hopefully, there was something more profound and/or eloquent in there, but who knows? One student started to retell how someone stole his iPod and he went over to his house with a baseball bat. He got the iPod back, by the way. Teenagers!

I wasn't able to get a loaner laptop, so that will be a top priority for Tuesday. It'll help with doing my job and finding my next one! The vacancy list was posted today. I started to send out my resume and already have one interview lined up for Wednesday. There are still lots of other schools to contact, as well.

Busy, busy. Life's not boring over here! Lord, please guide my words and actions and keep me moving forward! Help me to have some good stories to tell, as well!

PS - That garage door is shut right now!