Frozen Assets

From good to bad, and from bad to worse.

And no,  my period still hasn't started.  Just wanted to get that out of the way.

My weekend started out innocuous enough.   My sister-in-law graduated from college on Saturday, so we attended a party in her honor Friday afternoon.   From there, we went to a memorial concert for my godmother that was absolutely beautiful.  Of course, it was sad, but it was so lovely that I'll still put it in the "good" category.

Saturday started with an early graduation ceremony followed by a picnic, both considered "good" in my book.   After that, I went to my friend M's baby shower.  Only (and I did know this ahead of time), M wasn't there for the lunch part of it, since she was in the hospital.    Not having the baby, luckily, but dealing with some other odd condition which was causing her severe stomach pain on Friday.  Definitely "bad".

The baby shower migrated to the hospital to pay a visit to the patient, and while there we found out that they still hadn't offered a diagnosis, other than to tell her that her triglycerides are freakishly high.  We've just entered "worse" territory.   They're unsure what to do, but in the mean time they've given her a couple steroid injections to strengthen the baby's lungs in the case they need to deliver him early.   It's all very scary.

In the mean time, I received a letter from Victoria's Secret saying that because of suspected fraud, my account has been closed.    I don't have a Victoria's Secret account.  Seems that I am not only the victim of wallet theft, I've also become the victim of identity theft.   

Here's how I think it went down:

Joe B. Thief, we'll call him Joe, came into my office and took my wallet.  Then, he and his hoochie-mama girlfriend went for a shopping spree with my credit cards at Macy*s, Ross Dress for Less , Circuit City ,and some other not-so-exciting stores.  Then they went home, called up their more-serious-crime buddies and bought my social security number from them.   A couple days later they went to the mall, and Joe opened up a Victoria's Secret account and maxed it out buying his hoochie girlfriend some cute outfits.  Then he went to Gap, Old Navy, Banana Republic, and JC Penney and opened up some more accounts and bought more clothes for his hoochie.   Then it was time for Joe to make himself look good, so he went to Express, which I have been told is the same as Structure, opened and maxed out an account there, then went to Kohl's to buy the lady some jewelry.  After that, he still didn't have enough clothes, so he went to Big & Tall and tried to open an account there, but was declined.  (It's about time!)

All together, they stole probably over $10,000 from the credit card people.  The good folks at Kohl's are going to check their security cameras to see if they have any tapes of the bad guys.   In the mean time, I look suspiciously at every big and tall man I see...

Karma can kiss my ass.

So yesterday I was in this meeting that ran from 2-3ish.  I was in a conference room but I kept hearing my phone message alert going, so I left the conference room to put my phone in silent mode.   I didn't see who was leaving me messages, but I did have four missed calls.

Once out of the meeting, I checked my messages.  First one from Mom, asking would I be at my cousin's school play tonight.  Second one, Discover Card... looking into some suspected fraud.  I thought to myself, "Fraud? Nah - must just have been my big payments to the infertility folks - besides, my wallet is right ... "  Not here.  Not in my purse on my desk where I last had it.  It was gone. 

Next message - Visa, checking on some suspected fraud.

My heart raced as I said loudly - "Holy shit! My wallet was stolen!"   A few coworkers looked up.  I immediately called Discover and Visa and verified that sure enough, my wallet was stolen.   The thieves went on a shopping spree at a local mall.  Bastards.  At least I won't get charged for their purchases.

I don't care so much about most of the contents of the wallet.     I did lose about $100 in gift cards, which I didn't register so can't get those back.  I lost $20, my insurance cards, Costco membership, gym membership, driver license, acupuncture and dentist appointment reminder cards, my $2 bill... and maybe some business cards.   No biggie, whatever.  I'll miss the wallet itself - it was so cool, all purple and sparkly.  My cousin gave it to me a few years ago.  My friend A calls it my "pimp wallet".

Other that being sad about the wallet itself, I feel violated.  Somebody I don't know came into MY cubicle (during the 12 minutes I was out of the office), and looked at all MY stuff, rooted around in MY purse and took MY wallet.    There's a good chance they were still in the office when I came back in.    Creepy.

I'm a good person, I trust people, I do good things for my friends and the world... yet for some reason, it hasn't come back around to me yet.

I just bought a new wallet on eBay.  Ironically, the folks selling it believe in karma.