this is really freaky...

I got a call this morning, when I was home (pretty unlikely) and answered the home phone (also most unlikely). To get a recording that starts off with: "this is not a telemarketer" - which is weird. So the recording goes on to ask if this is F. Fluker?Which puts me to wondering who has one of my checks, that only have me listed by the first initial? But before I can get done with that curosity, the recording wants to know if I am responsible for a charge on my credit card (that was declined) for $22 in groceries on May 21. Which was only yesterday, and I know I didn't charge anything when I was at work, having only bought a bottle of floor cleaner to do the dreaded mopping.

So I punched the number, and got to talk to Lauren, the customer service rep., who asked if I had been at the Shop and Go in New Jersey yesterday - and she said the amount the customer attempted to charge was $102 - which is also very strange, since the recording said it was $22. But I assured her I was not in NJ on Tuesday, and I had possession of the card. When she said the attempt was with an actual card - I really got alarmed. And fell all over myself thanking them for being so diligent and preventing really bad things from happening.

The good news is the card has been cancelled. The bad news is that I won't have a card for the next week, and will have to stay at home instead of roaming around all over the state.

We read stuff in the paper, hear on the news about people loosing their minds over identity theft, how the mean-spirited amongst us, the devious minds of scum-bags, hackers on the internet are stealing info. left and right, creating problems for us all, innocent passers-by that take years to resolve and recover from. But - us being the unwary, unsuspecting ill-prepared law-abiders that we are, always suspect/think/believe it happens to Other People. Well... guess we have just become 'them'.

Remember the line from the Pogo comic strip? 'We have met the enemy, and it is us.' When you look at how we have been so overtly uncareful about the environment and neglect full of the air, water, soil, and concerns about everything we put in our mouths. Scarey. You have to occasionally think 'we asked for it' as things fall apart on this blue ball we inhabit.

I don't know what we can do to be better prepared for this sort of disaster, even though I get more paranoid every day about the end of the world. Not sure how to protect from financial crisis, but feel like it still looms, even though the media wants us to think things are on the upswing.

If my tech support was available, I would now display a photo of my sliced up credit card, shredded into strips to use for garden mulch.