car? what car?

Over the weekend I had my car stolen... again.

The wife had taken it to the shop for some repairs, and yesterday when I called to tell them about the funny noise my engine has been making lately our mechanic asked me when I was going to bring it in. I thought that was weird, since we had dropped it off on Saturday. Many phone calls to the wife and a visit to the shop later, I was on my way to the police station to file a stolen car report. Apparently what happened was that someone snuck into the shop, took our key off of the work order, and drove away in the car. And this all happened in a less than five minute window just after the wife left, when the mechanic stepped out into the shop to look at something on another car before coming back in to process our work order. He thought she had come back in, taken the key, and drove the car home for the weekend. We thought he had it.

The first time someone stole my car was in the year 2000 when somebody went into my bedroom, took the key off of my bookshelf, and took my car to smuggle drugs. The thieves decided to bring it back to me twenty days later, parking it right in front of my house and leaving the key on the front seat for me. I know it was used to smuggle drugs because a few months after I got it back I noticed that the speaker in the passenger door wasn't working. When I checked it out, I noticed that the cover had been pried off before (which i hadn't done), there was motor oil on the speaker cone to throw off drug sniffing dogs, and the wiring had all been disconnected turning the whole door into a compartment big enough to hide several bags of whatever.