Stolen Meter?!

I am not sure how many people this has happened to but let me tell you about what happened to me today. 

It’s a long hot Friday in Raleigh, NC the work day is over and it is a short walk back to the apartment all I want to do is open a cold beer and maybe watch an episode or two of my new favorite show Lost.  So I walk in the front door and realize something isn’t quite right, no power.  My first thought was did we forget to pay the bill this month?  So I make sure the electric bill is paid up and it was so I do the next logical thing and see if the neighbors have any power in there apartment?  Knock on the door and I can see before my neighbor even gets to the door that her lights are on but I go through the formality anyways Hi how are you blah blah blah.  At this point I try resetting the switches in the fuse box and nothing.  So now I make the dreaded call the the power company to report the outage figuring that I will be on hold for the next few hours when someone finally picks up.  I report that we have no power and the friendly operator takes all of my information and tells me that power should be restored my 7:45 or so.  I hang up the phone and 20 minutes later I receive a call saying that someone would be out shortly to check on the issue so I grab a beer and sit out front waiting for someone to come to the rescue.  When the technician finally arrives  we wonder around to the side of the building to discover that someone has stolen our meter from the side of the building???  WTF who steals a power meter??  Anyways the nice man replaced our meter cracked a joke that I must have pissed off the wrong girl (I think he was a comedian) and was on his way the day was saved.

Really who steals power meters??