I could get to like this "Internet" thing.

Last Thursday, when Daniel was at his music lesson, I got an email from a friend of ours.  We have a vacation home in the San Juan Islands (just north west of Seattle), and he was visiting his place on the island and looked in on our house.

He had noticed that the dining room set was missing and wanted to know if we knew anything about it.

Not surprisingly, we didn't, as soon as I saw that, I got that hideous feeling in the pit of my stomach that we'd been robbed.

I went up to the island on Saturday morning, spent the afternoon inventorying the things that were stolen and talking to the very nice policeman who came to take the police report.

One of his first questions was if we had pictures of the stuff that was stolen.  Of course we didn't (this is not at all surprising), but I was able to find a receipt for most of stolen items (this is actually pretty amazing if you know us).  But I still couldn't find a picture.

Until I got back home where I filled out the remaining forms.  Since I had the receipt, I had the manufacturers name and the model number for the items stolen.  I figured that it had been 8 years since we bought the stuff, so there was no chance I'd find it, but what the heck. 

I went to both MSN search and Google and between the two of them I somehow managed to find pictures from various furniture retailer's web sites.

The only item I couldn't find on the web was the dining room table (and 6 chairs).  I simply couldn't find any references to them and I didn't have the model number for them.  But eBay came to my rescue.  I searched on eBay and found someone who was selling the exact same table as was stolen (different fabric on the chairs but the same table).

Yipee!  I was able to fill the entire report complete with pictures from the web of almost all the items that were stolen.

Phew.

Now all I need to do is to deal with the insurance company (yuck).  And even better, I know people who are selling the stuff that was stolen so I can replace it.

Man, that "internet" can really come in handy.