wanted: stolen tulip side table

the walls are seafoam and buttermilk and the air is filled that distinguished smell of fresh paint. the txmi department has finally, after many promises of "next semester", moved into our very own building. well, floor at least. since the beginning of my days as a furnishings and interiors major, we've had to share our studio with the messy drawing I class that gets charcoal everywhere, had professors prohibit us from completing our projects on time because we couldn't use the plotter, and have to climb up and down flights of stairs to leave the building. i know, they seem like major problems to you. please note the sarcasm. but even so, only half of my classes have moved to the new buildings and neither one of the CAD labs are fully functioning yet. yes, some construction is still taking place. but for some reason, the hall has not been properly locked after hours.

mrs. scheuneman came into class today rather flustered. she went on to tell us a story of the morning's events. our department owns a eero saarinen tulip dining room set. if that doesn't mean anything to you, just know that its true 1960s icon furniture. since the building has not been properly locked as of late, one of the side tables disappeared between thursday and monday. after realizing that it had indeed completely disappeared and had not just been relocated to a different part of the building, she filed a police report. they had come in this morning and began to ask questions about the said tulip end table.

"what exactly does this table look like?" questioned the officer, who had clearly, like you, never heard of such a thing as a tulip side table. scheuneman tried to articulate the wide base, smoothly transitioning to a narrow stem and then curving gracefully out again into a flat surface, but he could not imagine it. so she decided to pull up a visual via ebay, entering "tulip side table" into the search engine. she clicked on the first image that popped up to enlarge the image and realized that the table was listed for pickup only at a town about 10 miles from the university.

yup. it sounded suspicious to her, too. so later on, playing investigator, she called up the number listed to slyly question the seller. after all, they aren't all that common.

"hi, i live in the area and was thinking about coming by to see the tulip side table you have listed. do you mind me asking when you got the table in?"

"about 6 days ago." gotcha! that fell in perfectly with the time frame. so she called up the police and told them to go investigate...but she didn't seem hopeful when recounting the story to us that any action would be taken. alas, the bid would end in 6 hours and our tulip side table would go to the highest bidder for a price well over $100.