Smashed

Friday morning, I woke to a knock on the door to my apartment. i grabbed my robe and put it on as I was walking out to the front door. No one was there when I opened it, but the apartment manager came back around the corner. She appologized for waking me up, but she wanted to tell me that my car was broken into.

I looked at her and just said softly, "Damn."

She told me i needed to call the police so they can fill out an incident report and what not. So i went back to my room, told jen what happened and got dressed. I grabbed my phone and called RPD on my way done to the garage. Within five minues, the responding police officer called me to tell me he was just down the road and be by very soon. He cam into the garage with me to look at the car and took down a report and my information.

He came by again two times when two other car owners reported their cars were broken into.

Yeah and the kicker to the whole story is that this is a secured garage. Either it is one of the other residents (or guests of residents) or someone on foot snuck in behind a car into the garage. And one of the other cars has been broken into 3 times now. It must be a different person every time. Why hit the same car (in the same spot) over and over again. if the looter scored the first time, chances are the owner is not going to leave anything of value in his car again.

For me, the driver side window was smashed out and the glove box and the compartment of the center consol were rummaged through. Nothing of apparent value was taken. My check book that was on  top of the visor was untouched. I had an old expired driver’s license in the glove box. Whatever, the state has changed the style of license and gave everyone new numbers since they card expired. I also had an old credit card that had expired. Since it was the same number of my current card, i called the credit card company and they told me that they’ll cancel that one and send me a new one with a new number. we took this approach just to make sure that even though the card was still thee, they hadn’t taken a picture of it just to make sure it looked like it wasn’t stolen.

In Minnesota, one of the state laws for car insurance is to allow for a zero deductable for auto glass replacement. I called the insurance angetn and she told me of a place she recommends. I called them up and set up the claim with them and by one that afternoon, my car was ready to go.

Mind you this was Friday the 13th. I was going to leave the car there and have Jen follow me to the auto shop so we can go to Ikea from there. I went to put the car seat stuff into her car and to get her car to warmed up. I got in, placed the key into the ignition, turned the key. . . and the car wouldn’t start.

Just my luck.

I tried jumping it and it wouldn’t take. there was a lot of gunk built up on the positive terminal. I decided to go and wait at the shop until my car was done. There was a ton of glass on the driver seat so i put a piece of cardboard on the seat and had the heat on full blast. I was there an hour (11 am now) and called my buddy Jeff who said he could come out and pick me up. he took me to walmart where I was going to get a new battery but what the computer at walmart said i needed for jen’s car wasn’t the same as i had in there. so i decided to get a battery terminal brush. So jeff and i went to my place and we cleaned the terminal and then the car jumped.

Jen had fixed us lunch so we went in and cleaned up for a nice meal of lasagna, garlic toast, and salad. Afterwards, as Jeff was leaving, we had to jump the car one last time. I was going to take it to walmart and let them deal with putting the battery in. If it ended up being the wrong one, then it would be on them and not me. but once i got up there, I turned the engine off and back on and it started fine. i started the car again yesterday morning and it started right up. So I’m gonna wait on the battery for now.

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Minneapolis