Welcome To LA

So I thought I would relay an experience that happened to me a couple weeks ago.  Just a couple days after I moved into my new place, I left the house to notice that my car had been broken into.  I was kind of shocked as we live in a nice little neighborhood, and there are Porsche's, Mercedes', and BMW's parked all up and down the street.  Yet, my car, the second cheapest car on the block (only my roommates 95 Camry is worth less) was broken into.  My stuff was all tossed about, and it seemed that the thief had been in quite a hurry.  I took inventory and found that my iPod and charge cord were gone.  My wallet was gone, and my Bible was gone.  But other than that everything was still there.  Now, my iPod was one of the original series old ones, and can’t really keep a charge for longer than 10 mins if it isn't plugged in, so I was not to broken up about that.  The Bible had been in a carrying case, and so I thought the thief must have hoped it contained something more than just a bible.  My wallet had a bunch of contact/business cards, a few seldom used credit cards, my PADI dive license, and two gift cards.  The gift cards did total about $50, and a replacement PADI license also cost about $50.  So all in all, I was not out much, and I thought it a fitting welcome to the great city of Los Angeles.

Now, even though I wasn't out much, there is always a feeling of violation whenever someone has illegally invaded your personal space.  But here is where the story gets interesting.  About 10 hours after discovering the break in, one of my two roommates was having some friends over for dinner.  The first two guests to arrive remarked that three houses down there was a Bible, carrying case, and loose papers strewn all over the front yard.  Me and my roommate looked at each other and then quickly went down the street to find that the thief had discarded my Bible, carrying case, and loose papers all over the lawn.  He must have started going through it and figured that it did not have any monetary value and just chucked it.  But as interesting as that may be, I could not believe what happened next.

I first need to preface this part with a Facebook complaint.  Did you know that when you check your messages in Facebook, there are actually two message folders?  There is one that has your normal messages that you see, and then there is an "other messages" folder.  The problem with this is that when you get a message that goes into your “other messages” folder, Facebook does not alert you.  I just found this out on Friday, 13 days after my car was broken into.  I happened to be reading a message from a friend, and noticed that I had 67 messages in my "other" folder.  When I opened it up, I had messages dating back 2 years.  Some were from early childhood friends saying things to the effect as "Hey, are you the Travis that was in my 3rd grade class in Egypt?"  But the two most recent messages were from the day after my car was broken into, and they were from someone on my street who had found my wallet in their front yard.  So I contacted the person and they still had my wallet.  I went and retrieved it and found that the only thing missing was the two gift cards.  Everything else was there.  Of course, I had already spent $50 to renew my PADI license.  Had I known about the "other messages" folder, or had Facebook sent alerts for my "other messages", I could have saved $50.  So the moral of this story is to frequently check your "other messages" folder in Facebook.