A Christmas Miracle!

Back in September we woke up one Monday morning to find the front driver's side window of our 4Runner shattered and our ipod stolen.  I wanted to move.  I was so upset by the theft and that there was auto glass all over the grass where my kids play, and I hated to go to or from the car at night.  Plus, with our pared-down grad. student budget, just going out and buying a new 80G ipod was not a reasonable option.  We dutifully reported it to the police with no expectation that it would do anything other than help them more accurately reflect the crime rate in what seemed then to be a rotten little town.
But then, Monday, Dec 14, Justin got a call--the police wanted to speak with him.  They had recovered a number of ipods and gps's from four little punks who had been trying to sell them on ebay.  They had so many that they were behind and their inventory was piling up.  The trick is, they were finally caught because some of the gps's were code-protected, and after people bought them on ebay they realized they had been stolen and reported it to the police. We found a copy of our ipod's serial number (as the last ipod to be synced with our desktop), called the police and they said, "Yep, it looks like they tried to scratch off the serial number, but we think it's yours."  Off to the police station Justin went (it was fun to say that Dad had to go down to the police station--the kids' eyes got really big).
Our ipod was labeled "#21," it was full of Gangster rap and "The Best of Beethoven" (I'm not sure how to feel about a delinquent who pairs those two genres of music, maybe there's hope for him after due justice?).  We reformatted it and renamed it from "Zwags" (courtesy of the delinquent) to "Pheonix" to commemorate its restoration. We've also turned in a copy of the receipt for replacing the window, and may be able to recover that cost as well, in time.  Our faith in justice is renewed and with enough memory to hold our entire music collection our life has a more extensive and eclectic soundtrack again. :)
Merry Christmas to All, and to all a Good (Free-Of-Petty-Theft) Night!