Two weekends ago, the weekend of the 14th, I was in Ohio for my dad's 52nd birthday. I love my dog, so I took him with me. My roommate Brain was out of town at an art show of his that was opening and my other roommate Ian was gone at a retreat of some sort. The house was empty. It's not the first time the house has been empty. So we didn't think anything of it. When I returned home, I noticed that my TV table was a little pulled away from the wall. I just pushed it back and thought nothing of it. The next night, I got a little hankerin' for some video gamage. As I reached for my xbox 360 controller, I thought, "hugh, I wonder who put that away." As I moved toward the tv table/video game drawers, I noticed that the whole system was missing. I turned to Ian and said, "hey man, where's the xbox?" He had as much of an idea as I did. I called the police and they made their way over...in the 2.5hr roundabout way. in the meantime, I noticed that my box of antique knives was missing. A couple days later, I would also notice that all of my cologne was gone. The funny thing: They left my laptop, my digital video camera, my entertainment system, and a lot of other cool stuff. Regardless of what was NOT taken, there WAS stuff taken and it took me a few hours to figure out just how someone had snuck into my house. After finding out, I was amazed. I want to tell you about this so that it doesn't happen to you. Here's how they got in. First, they drilled a hole just outside of my front door's trim, adjacent to my deadbolt lock. They stuffed that hole full of toilet paper, probably using a pencil's eraser end to shove it in (yes, seriously). Here's the thing, if you do that one day and then wait for me to open my door and go inside, the paper expands into the deadbolt hole when that space becomes available. Then, the theif stuffed more paper into the hole, creating more pressure. The next time I opened my door, it intruded more into that deadbolt hole. The theif did this repeatedly until eventually, when I would lock my door, the bolt would pack that toilet paper against its self and the bolt wouldn't be able to go all the way into the hole. If you know deadbolts then you know that if they're not all the way extended, they don't lock into place. After this, the intruder just put a knife into the crack in my door and shimmeyed the bolt over and let him self into my house. After he left, he just shimmeyed the bolt back into place, so that I never knew the door had been open while I was gone. I've never heard of that method of breaking in before. So, if you've got a door, which I hope you do, then be sure to occasionally check around the frame near the deadbolt lock. If there are holes there, patch them up and make sure that nothing's been shoved in there. I hope this has been helpful. God bless you all, Abe

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