Sunday, February 13, 2011

Interesting Day

We went to Angel's Restaurant for our usual Sunday morning breakfast with friends. Hardy and Judy brought Kelly and Shonas, of course, and Steve and Jan were there. We settled some of the weighty international issues (the Egyptian government transition, Steve and Jan's prospects for summer workkamping, Kelly's work on Hardy and Judy's bathroom remodeling.....)

Our walk took us along the levee and Old Military Highway. We were walking along Old Military when we finally saw our first javelinas of the season: a mother followed by three youngsters ran across the road and into the brush of the wildlife preserve.

This afternoon we stopped by to check out the progress on the bath and found Hardy wielding a shovel and most of the old stuff removed. Shonas showed us the new curved corner shower waiting to go in. Old plumbing parts and boxes of new tiles were in sight. Kelly called last chance to use the facilities before he removed the old toilet. We decided that we must have a party to celebrate the new room in all its remodeled glory.


We also picked up our ham bone that Judy had in her freezer from the Super Bowl party. We'll be making split pea soup, yum. Judy handed us another bag of their grapefruit too. We won't be short of vitamin C anytime soon!

Tonight we went over to the clubhouse to a slideshow by a couple who went to the Falklands, South Georgia, and Antarctica on a National Geographic Explorer cruise. They had some remarkable photos to show and experiences to relate.

On the rather less pleasant side, I discovered today that one of my credit cards was missing. After spending an hour on the phone with the card issuer and another few minutes talking to VISA lost and stolen cards, it was clear that someone has been using the card, mainly if not entirely online. The cards have been canceled; we'll get new cards in the mail shortly; and we'll get an affidavit to sign that the fraudulent charges are not ours.

The curious thing is that I'm nearly certain I had the card in my possession and used it to buy diesel on Friday morning, but some of the fraudulent charges were made as early as February 8. None of them has yet shown up in our online account. And even more oddly, many were for Kindle items and other Amazon charges, so Amazon will surely be able to identify the account holder and location of the Kindle.... We'll see. Meanwhile I'm racking my brain to figure out how I lost track of the card. I might have put it in my jeans pocket at the service station Friday. We were on our way to Nuevo Progreso. It could have fallen on the ground from my pocket or been pickpocketed. Nothing else was missing from my wallet. And I can't figure out how the thief could have known the billing address, which I thought was essential to use the card online. Guess not. I am feeling pretty down on myself for losing the card.

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