Two weeks ago we finally put our house on the market. A day after it appeared on Zillow.com, we got an email inquiry from a fellow in Edinburgh, Scotland, who was with the U.N. Development Corporation and was being posted to the U.S.. He liked what he saw, but had questions: Did we have weatherstripping? Were there cracks in the walls? Other maintenance issues?
After about five more exchanges of emails, the man and his wife were sure: they wanted our house. They had recently sold their own house and could offer a cash contract (no contingency, hurray!) They would be in our state by the end of July to sign a contract, but they would have the New York office send us a binder immediately, taken from his hefty travel allowance.
Then we heard that he was posted to a 3-day conference on AIDS in Benin (Africa), after which he would visit the New York offices and then fly on to see us.
A few days later, a Fed Ex package arrived with three money orders of $950 each. It was never our intent to accept a binder to take our house off the market, and we had told him that; nevertheless, there it was, and it was more than the $1,000 he had said was coming.
So the next day we got an urgent email. The secretary had screwed up and sent more than she had been directed to, and now our would-be buyers were going to have trouble with getting to the States. (Are you beginning to get an uneasy feeling here?) So would we please wire the overage of $1,850 to his travel agent in Benin?
My wife, bless her, politely replied that there was no way we would send money, his or ours, to a travel agent in Benin. I probably would have been less politic.
Did you get the scam line? Send money to Africa. Yeah, sure, like we never heard of the Nigerians who wanted to sneak stolen government funds out of their country and only needed a little help from an American contact, for whom they'd split the take. (If you have ever fallen for such a scheme - I'm sorry for reminding you of a sore subject. I betcha wouldn't do it now!)
We started this exchange with the worry that it was "too good to be true." An Internet bite for a full price contract on our house the first week it's up for sale, in this market?? We decided to treat it as legitimate unless or until the other party revealed his desire to have us send money somewhere or give details of our bank accounts. But across half a dozen contacts, each with homey concerns like, "My wife is a school teacher. Will she be able to work in your state?" we began to trust. When the URGENT email came, although we knew not to follow the directions, we grieved some for a deal we hoped was going to be legitimate. Ah, well.
So I hope that this exposition will help YOU avoid being bitten by this clever scheme that relied, not on our sense of greed, but the building of a bond of trust.
Postscript - Some other things we discovered once we looked online for evidence of this scheme. We felt kinda good that the other guy was out the money for his Fed Ex package. Probably not so. It turns out these mailings are usually funded through stolen credit cards. So, if your identity was stolen, it might have been used to facilitate a scam to get major money out of someone else. The money orders? Faked. Close examination revealed giveaways, and online research shows that denominations of $950 are very common in scams, for some reason. There were over 3,000 complaints in one forum about faked money orders. Suffice it to say we ascertained that there is no such payee as shown on the money orders we got. Indeed, people targeted like us for scams are sometimes arrested for trying to cash these fake money orders. Check out Craig's List, read about money order scams there - you'll never want to accept a money order for anything, ever again!
7/31/09
5/13/09
The Census Guy
By now, you should have had a visit from The Census Guy.
What?? Isn't the decennial census next year??
Well, yeah. But the Census Bureau is running a big effort this year to update addresses and find all the new homes constructed since 2000. Not to mention: tents, boats, and railroad cars, if people are living in them.
Yours truly was a Census Guy. For six weeks I walked the streets, ringing doorbells and verifying addresses. The effort (at least in my area) is now complete and my pith helmet is retired.
Total addresses verified: 5,015.
Total locations mapped: about 1,800.
Getting Serious About the Move
It's been our intent to finally move "back home" once the kids were both off in college. Following Christmas, we started making good on that promise.
There's a real sense of inevitability once your belongings start disappearing into boxes. Finally, it's not just a plan - it's a project!
But once you've assessed your house and resolved to change the things that have annoyed you all along - like ugly wallpaper installed by the last owners - you start to wonder: "Exactly WHY are we moving?"
Because that's the plan, of course!
Well, the five-page checklist has shrunk to just a few items. And soon we'll open the nicely refurbished front door to...?
All the people out of work and foreclosed on?
2/28/09
One Million
A million is a largish number - especially if it relates to individual decisions by a population.
They give gold records in the music biz to commemorate a million sales. After all, the revenue generated is substantial. There are no gold anythings in the free publishing biz. That's OK - "free" is not "worthless." When a million decisions have been made to visit the literature of the past, that's a lot of hours invested in hearing the thoughts of great writers.
I've been proud to be a LibriVox reader (for three years, this month, in fact). And I'm prouder for having brought to the homes and cars of many people a total of one million listens to my solo readings, a goal I hit today.
If you've been a listener - thank you! And I hoped I've entertained you. Stay tuned. there's more choice from the old masters coming!
They give gold records in the music biz to commemorate a million sales. After all, the revenue generated is substantial. There are no gold anythings in the free publishing biz. That's OK - "free" is not "worthless." When a million decisions have been made to visit the literature of the past, that's a lot of hours invested in hearing the thoughts of great writers.
I've been proud to be a LibriVox reader (for three years, this month, in fact). And I'm prouder for having brought to the homes and cars of many people a total of one million listens to my solo readings, a goal I hit today.
If you've been a listener - thank you! And I hoped I've entertained you. Stay tuned. there's more choice from the old masters coming!
2/23/09
Coming Now to an iPhone Near You!
It's been strangely gratifying to see LibriVox recordings I've made for sale on EBay (What? Hadn't you noticed that yet?) "Strangely" because all LibriVox audiobooks are free for download from www.archive.org. But if people want to burn those downloads onto CDs and offer them for sale, that is actually an activity we LV'ers encourage, since not everyone has the patience for what can be long downloads.
Add to EBay a new outlet: http://www.travelingclassics.com/
Traveling Classics is a new application for your iPhone or iPod Touch which reads a classic book to you while scrolling the text on the screen, synchronized to the narration. As an application available at the iTunes AppStore, Traveling Classics has to submit all its intended content to Apple for permission.
On its opening day, February 12, Traveling Classics launched with eight audiobooks, one of which was my "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn." So now, for a limited time only, you can have me read to you for over seven hours for 99 cents!
http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=304223424&mt=8
Cool, huh? Not quite free... but the feeling that gives me: priceless!
Add to EBay a new outlet: http://www.travelingclassics.com/
Traveling Classics is a new application for your iPhone or iPod Touch which reads a classic book to you while scrolling the text on the screen, synchronized to the narration. As an application available at the iTunes AppStore, Traveling Classics has to submit all its intended content to Apple for permission.
On its opening day, February 12, Traveling Classics launched with eight audiobooks, one of which was my "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn." So now, for a limited time only, you can have me read to you for over seven hours for 99 cents!
http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=304223424&mt=8
Cool, huh? Not quite free... but the feeling that gives me: priceless!
1/1/09
Myrtle Beach Off-Season
Myrtle Beach has a reputation for being a big party beach. (And golf - don't forget golf; there's over 100 courses in and around Myrtle Beach.) But come the Fall and the crowds go away, and the beach shows its more contemplative side.
We made two sallies to the beach, in October and November, playing share-and-share-alike with relatives and timeshares.
Here are a few of my favorite memories.
Sea Oats - Sunlit Waters
Atalaya - Conch
With sister Porter & wife Brenda
The changing sky
We made two sallies to the beach, in October and November, playing share-and-share-alike with relatives and timeshares.
Here are a few of my favorite memories.
Dawn
Sea Oats - Sunlit Waters
Quiet Enjoyment
Atalaya - Conch
With sister Porter & wife Brenda
The changing sky
Sculpture!
I know of two world-class sculpture gardens on the East Coast. One is Storm King, near West Point, NY. Its collection runs to huge outdoor pieces, dozens of feet high. Most are fairly abstract. I've read it described as the best undiscovered secret in the state, and I agree. I was last there in 2005, renewing an acquaintance I began in 1973.
The other is Brookgreen Gardens, south of Myrtle Beach, SC. Originally the preserve of Anna Hyatt Huntington, herself a world-class sculptress, this collection runs from table-top to life-size and is strongly representational. We had the pleasure of visiting Brookgreen again in October.
The other is Brookgreen Gardens, south of Myrtle Beach, SC. Originally the preserve of Anna Hyatt Huntington, herself a world-class sculptress, this collection runs from table-top to life-size and is strongly representational. We had the pleasure of visiting Brookgreen again in October.
Children pledge allegiance.
Sancho Panza acquires a guest.
This guy is carrying a torch for you!
Young ladies find uncomfortable perches.
If this face doesn't say "Joy!" then nothing will!
October might seem to be a poor month to find floral color, but not at Brookgreen. Even the butterflies stick around late in the season.
For whatever reason, I have a long-standing interest in shooting interesting textures. Here, even the live oaks get into the act at Brookgreen Gardens.
7/8/08
Ka-Boom!
Our subdivision had its usual crackerjack fireworks display this 4th. Here are a few of my photos.
The second one even looks like a palmetto, the S.C. state tree!
My Year Without Eating
Well, I finally finished a long-term project. It took me eight years and three days, but I did it - I went a whole year without eating.
No breakfast, lunch, dinner. No dessert. No snack. Nothing solid for at least 24 hours at a time, and usually 36 hours. Three hundred and sixty-five times. I made Mondays my fasting day, except when on vacation or holiday. My normal routine was to eat nothing between Sunday dinner and Tuesday breakfast. If I felt particularly stressed, I sometimes trimmed it to midnight-to-midnight, going the calendar day without.
I grew up with the admonition, "Clean your plate! Children are starving in Europe!" And eating a meal on a regular schedule got to be, well, a regular habit. And then I would catch the other side of the coin: "You've never known what it's like to go hungry." So when emergencies or other events needing my attention took me out in the plant at lunch (or dinner), my stomach would grumble and complain about the disruption and I found myself distracted from what was causing me to miss the meal.
So, in part this regimen was to silence this inconvenient critic. It could inform me I was hungry all it wanted. After a few months of regular fasting, that became just background noise, easy to ignore.
Another part was a desire to lose some weight. My weight has always been pretty stable, but the middle-age expansion was quietly asserting itself. I'd heard that after age 40, most American adults gain a pound a year, and that was about right in my case. I'd tried to prevent it, but no combination of foreswearing midnight snacks and exercising had yet reversed the trend. But I finished my year of fasting at almost exactly the weight I started. I experienced some downs & ups. I can't recommend this regimen for weight loss for two reasons. First, you find yourself counting 2,000 calories not consumed on Monday, and so Tuesday you have seconds. Hah! You're going nowhere! But the second reason is that even if you control your impulses all week, your body is busy adjusting to the new dietary reality. It learns to be more efficient, and so you end up maintaining the same weight on fewer calories per week. I guess I can only claim the eight pounds I didn't gain over the last eight years! Ah well, that's something.
The gains have been mental. After the first successful trial, I knew I could survive and function even at work. After a few months, I could sit down with the family at Monday dinner and be content with a glass of tea while they ate. When I had done this for over a year, I took stock and asked myself where I was going with this. Surely any benefits that could be ascribed to fasting were already achieved (my doctor told me that if everyone did this, Type 2 diabetes would probably disappear from his practice). I looked down the road and decided to go for a year of fasting. Staring down seven more years of this was a bit daunting; it's not like weekly fasts are fun!
Two years ago I confirmed my plan to finish my 365 days and drop the fasts. The calendar told me I should be finishing up about the time Hunter graduated from high school and Brenda and I became empty nesters. I didn't want to impose on Brenda to eat alone or in front of me, so that seemed like a perfect time to finish up.
But I can't quite give up the habit. For one reason, I'm afraid my more-efficient metabolism might let me balloon if I go back to eating every day. So I'm now on a modified plan: two days a week I give up breakfast and lunch and only have dinner, so I drop four meals over two days.
A short calculation reveals I've gone without food 1.77% of my life. I think that entitles me to say I know now what it's like to go hungry. But it's over. I did it.
It was enough.
No breakfast, lunch, dinner. No dessert. No snack. Nothing solid for at least 24 hours at a time, and usually 36 hours. Three hundred and sixty-five times. I made Mondays my fasting day, except when on vacation or holiday. My normal routine was to eat nothing between Sunday dinner and Tuesday breakfast. If I felt particularly stressed, I sometimes trimmed it to midnight-to-midnight, going the calendar day without.
I grew up with the admonition, "Clean your plate! Children are starving in Europe!" And eating a meal on a regular schedule got to be, well, a regular habit. And then I would catch the other side of the coin: "You've never known what it's like to go hungry." So when emergencies or other events needing my attention took me out in the plant at lunch (or dinner), my stomach would grumble and complain about the disruption and I found myself distracted from what was causing me to miss the meal.
So, in part this regimen was to silence this inconvenient critic. It could inform me I was hungry all it wanted. After a few months of regular fasting, that became just background noise, easy to ignore.
Another part was a desire to lose some weight. My weight has always been pretty stable, but the middle-age expansion was quietly asserting itself. I'd heard that after age 40, most American adults gain a pound a year, and that was about right in my case. I'd tried to prevent it, but no combination of foreswearing midnight snacks and exercising had yet reversed the trend. But I finished my year of fasting at almost exactly the weight I started. I experienced some downs & ups. I can't recommend this regimen for weight loss for two reasons. First, you find yourself counting 2,000 calories not consumed on Monday, and so Tuesday you have seconds. Hah! You're going nowhere! But the second reason is that even if you control your impulses all week, your body is busy adjusting to the new dietary reality. It learns to be more efficient, and so you end up maintaining the same weight on fewer calories per week. I guess I can only claim the eight pounds I didn't gain over the last eight years! Ah well, that's something.
The gains have been mental. After the first successful trial, I knew I could survive and function even at work. After a few months, I could sit down with the family at Monday dinner and be content with a glass of tea while they ate. When I had done this for over a year, I took stock and asked myself where I was going with this. Surely any benefits that could be ascribed to fasting were already achieved (my doctor told me that if everyone did this, Type 2 diabetes would probably disappear from his practice). I looked down the road and decided to go for a year of fasting. Staring down seven more years of this was a bit daunting; it's not like weekly fasts are fun!
Two years ago I confirmed my plan to finish my 365 days and drop the fasts. The calendar told me I should be finishing up about the time Hunter graduated from high school and Brenda and I became empty nesters. I didn't want to impose on Brenda to eat alone or in front of me, so that seemed like a perfect time to finish up.
But I can't quite give up the habit. For one reason, I'm afraid my more-efficient metabolism might let me balloon if I go back to eating every day. So I'm now on a modified plan: two days a week I give up breakfast and lunch and only have dinner, so I drop four meals over two days.
A short calculation reveals I've gone without food 1.77% of my life. I think that entitles me to say I know now what it's like to go hungry. But it's over. I did it.
It was enough.
5/16/08
Close Call
Driving carefully, being alert, not using a cell phone while driving - these are good things, but they only carry you so far. Sometimes the problem is with the other guy (or gal).
Today Brenda & I were beginning our daily walk; we were still on our own block. A teen neighbor backed her car out of the driveway across the street and hit me from behind. I hit the concrete of a driveway, did (I think) two rolls and a near-headstand, and ended up face-down and full-length on the pavement.
I finally found some use for the tumbling classes I took in high school gym all those years ago. At least part of my tumble was under control. And I got up unhurt and able to do our four-mile walk.
It was a close call. And I'm glad it was I who was hit and not Brenda. But the incident points up our vulnerability on the road. Watch out, folks. And pay attention when you drive. Please.
Today Brenda & I were beginning our daily walk; we were still on our own block. A teen neighbor backed her car out of the driveway across the street and hit me from behind. I hit the concrete of a driveway, did (I think) two rolls and a near-headstand, and ended up face-down and full-length on the pavement.
I finally found some use for the tumbling classes I took in high school gym all those years ago. At least part of my tumble was under control. And I got up unhurt and able to do our four-mile walk.
It was a close call. And I'm glad it was I who was hit and not Brenda. But the incident points up our vulnerability on the road. Watch out, folks. And pay attention when you drive. Please.
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