One Big Rant

glad to hear your electronics have been replaced, but i thought you said you left your backpack in a cab?

I filed a police report, and the insurance company is treating it like a theft (my backpack was in a known location, and an hour later it wasn't).

I hear the Seattle Police have their best officers on the case.

Take the plea, McChris.

When I drunkenly left my wallet in a cab in april (note: don't do this), it would have felt a lot better to say "it was stolen".

Dav,
did you call the cab company's dispatch and have them make an announcement to all cabs? Did you check the cab's lost and found? Did you file a police report?

If you did all this, then I'd say your wallet was stolen. You left it in a known location and someone took it. If you didn't go to any trouble to locate it, I'd agree that you lost it.

See - I would disagree (even though your view would make me feel better about my drinking problem)...

I called all of the cab companies (I have no idea what kind of cab it was) several times. I did file a police report. I did walk around the estimated area of loss over and over, weeping, hoping it fell into a gutter and has been miraculously overlooked by others.

But I can't really say that my wallet was stolen. I left it somewhere. Saying it was stolen implies I was the victim of something other than my own neglect. I know it hurts, lord how I know, but I would say that you lost the backpack.

BTW - this is so much better than the real work I should be doing.

So there are two possibilities: the cabbie took it, or another fare did. Considering the unlikely third possibility of my backpack being destroyed when the cab spontaneously burst into flames can be considered an exercise to the reader.

If the cabbie took it, well, he knew it belonged to someone in the cab, he could easily discover the identity of the owner (your wallet had your name and address, my backpack had my passport in it). Plus the message over the dispatcher made it clear who the owner was, and how to contact me. In this case I would say the cabbie stole it.

If it were another fare, again, the identity of the owner was easily discoverable. Besides, I can't imagine someone getting out of a cab with another person's backpack and thinking it was all well and good to take it home, without informing the cabbie, or calling the police. Not doing the due dilligence to find the owner (especially when it was so easy to do) counts as theft in my book.

I'm not trying to paint myself as an innocent victim (after all, it was my fault the backpack was left there), but the cabbie (or the unscupulous fare) does bare some responsibility for taking my backpack home, disregarding the name and address in the passport and not calling the police.

And yes, this is much better than real work.

so our items were lost. AND stolen.

let's celebrate our agreement by getting hammered and riding in taxis. i'll meet you at the monk.