Security

When I first got married, I changed my name legally and (eventually) on my driver's license. I did not ever get around to changing it with my credit card companies. While I did change my name with my bank, I haven't gotten new checks or a new debit card. In other words, I have two recently acquired credit cards with my legal name on them, and several credit/debit cards without.

The frightening part is, nobody has EVER called me on it. I didn't update my name on my driver's license until about a year after I got married. In the intervening year, I used my driver's license as identification for all kinds of official things. The fact that my ID didn't match my social security card was never brought up. Since I changed my driver's license, no merchant has ever asked why the name on my credit card is not the same as the name on my ID.

So, I guess the moral of the story is that women can steal the identity of any other woman with her same first name. It will be assumed (I guess) that she just hasn't changed her last name with all her credit card companies.

Ouch

So a five-year-old (one of the children Jon and I teach) came up to me in church today. "Do you have any kids?"

"No, not yet."

"Oh, well, when is the baby coming out of there [while poking my stomach]?"

Apparently either five-year-olds have no concept of the anatomy of pregnancy, or I need to start thinking about losing some weight.

New House

By far, the very best part of our new house is the garage. I can't even express how satisfying it is to drive along at 6:15 in the morning and see all the frost-encrusted cars, secure in the knowledge that I am no longer a participant in the car-scraping game.

The worst part is moving. I hate unpacking. This morning I found twenty thank-you notes from our wedding that we never unpacked (or sent) after we moved into our last place. This has done absolutely nothing to endear unpacking to me. If you were one of those twenty people, I'm really, really sorry. And thanks for the gift.

Childhood Trauma

I asked my sister Kristina what I should blog about. She suggested either how great she is, or childhood trauma. I have decided to combine both of those and describe how Kristina made my childhood traumatic.

When I was around seven or eight and Kristina was two or three, I loved lying on the floor coloring, reading, writing, or whatever else I did at that age. Kristina loved running around and jumping on things. This combined with unfortunate results for me, as I was her favorite thing to jump on.

So I would just be hunched over on the floor, innocently doing my thing, and Kristina would run around the corner, take a flying leap, and land on my back, knocking the wind out of me. I would scream at her to stop, and my mom would tell me to be nice to her.

To make matters worse, every time I told my friends or cousins about how Kristina routinely abused me, they would say, "But she's just a baby! She doesn't know any better!"

For the record, three-year-olds are not babies. Also I believe I have found a culprit for any back problems I may develop along the line.

Spam

So I received this lovely piece of spam today. For only a few hours a week, a bank account, and the ability to wire money out of my bank account, I can make $600-800 per week! Hurray!


Hello Rachel Reddoch,
Our company is currently looking for qualified individuals for an opening of a "Payment Assist Manager" that doesn't demand any special skills. The job will take only several hours a week. It's a great opportunity to get an extra-income before Holidays in a short time.

The general activity of this opening is to collect payments from our customers in the US.
Each fund transfer will be accompanied by detailed instructions.
Compulsory requirements:

- Age: at least 21;
- US citizeship;
- computer skills and e-mail address;
- at least 1-2 hours of free time per day for work business hours;
- Initiative and honesty.
- an account at any bank in the US;
- an ability to send Western Union trasfers;
Average profit is $600-$800 per week.

The Shoe Date

So back before I met Jonathan, I was in a singles ward. And the leadership thought it would be a good idea to encourage dating, so they devised the idea of a shoe date. All the ladies in the ward who wanted to participate contributed a shoe. All the men who wanted to participate came and chose a shoe, and then were told to whom the shoe belonged. The idea was that the man would return the shoe and ask its owner on a date. So around February, I put my shoe into the pile with everyone else's and it was duly selected.

Everyone else in the ward began going on their shoe dates. The bishop would remind us every Sunday that people needed to go on their dates. As weeks turned into months, my shoe was not returned. Finally when the semester was two weeks away from ending, I decided that not being asked out was one thing, but having half of my favorite pair of shoes stolen was another. Our ward was the same as our apartment complex, so I recruited my roommates to go try to recover my shoe. They went and knocked on the doors of all the men in our ward. Eventually they found somebody who had seen my shoe in his roommate's room.

With my shoe recovered and the identity of my would-be date revealed, I decided I had to know why he had never asked me out, and also what he had planned on doing with my shoe. So once again I sent my roommates (cowardly, I know). They came back with the report that he had chosen my shoe because it was very cute, and once he found out it belonged to me, his plan was just to hold onto the shoe indefinitely because he couldn't return it without asking me out. Ouch. But hey, at least my shoes are cute.

Patience is a Virtue

Once upon a time, I was trying to open two different Word documents at work. And my computer was being slow. So I clicked both documents several times, thinking it would help with the lack of responsiveness.



Or, you know, just open each document 15 times. Either way.