So our apartment got broken into. I'm writing this from our crappy desktop instead of my (equally crappy) laptop. Apparently sliding glass doors are pretty easy to open and it only takes about twenty seconds to sweep through and steal some electronics and most of my wife's jewelry.

     As much as I'd like to whine about the laptop, I can deal with that and it seems that I might have another one pretty soon because of the kindness of some very good friends. The real bitch of it is my wife's stuff; we aren't wealthy to begin with, so I haven't been able to give her a lot. Most of what she has she brought in from before our marriage, and most of that is gone now.

     The cops say that there is a monitoring system for pawn shops that might make our stuff turn up. The problem is that the system itself is run by Phoenix P.D., and my experience with them has been that if there isn't any money in it for the city, they don't do a whole lot. That's probably why I saw a total of seven cops writing traffic tickets on the way to work on saturday, but it took a cop three hours to show up on sunday after the burglary to do what amounts to some quick note-taking and then nothing else.

    On an up note, this has caused me to go to literally 10-20 pawn shops in the last few days. I've learned some interesting things:

1. Most pawn shop employees are missing teeth. This isn't true of the Big Nice Brand pawn shop, but it's true of all the lower level ones.

2. Tools are really, really cheap at pawn shops. At least hand tools are, and those are the only kind that I'm not afraid of. I can go in with ten dollars tomorrow and buy 40 ratchet heads, for instance. That's value, right there, and maybe next time I have to fix my air conditioning I won't have to do it with vice grips.

3. The nicer the area you are in, the nicer the pawn shop stuff. I'm pretty sure this isn't purely because of what they take in; its too well targeted. I am imagining they only keep what might sell in any given area. I think they send out most of the nicer stuff to other shops when shitty pawnshops take it in, and the nicer ones melt the crappy stuff for gold. Xboxes, tools, and guitars are pretty universal.