Fraudulent Citizen

Wow, 7 whole months without a single blog post! Wonder what could cause me to be re-inspired to post after such a significant hiatus? My wedding? My birthday the day after my wedding? My awesome honeymoon? Nope! This post is lovingly attributed to the person whom I lovingly refer to as "Fraudulent Citizen". Below is a fun account of my adventures in Fraudland!

It all began on a rather normal Friday morning in the Metzger household. The birds chirped, the Metzgers showered, ate and burped, all was well. Until.

7/24/09, 7 AM: Checked email while eating breakfast. Noticed there were several emails fom Paypal thanking me for my purchase of $1,549.99 and congratulations on winning your eBay item, a shiny brand-new Macbook Pro!! Wait...what? Did I buy this online while sleepwalking? Did I unknowingly make the switch from PC to Mac while I slumbered? DARN those commercials and their subliminal advertising techniques. DARN them to HECK!

7/24/09, 7:02 AM: Called Paypal. Asked WTF is going on. Did not say "WTF" except for in my head. Was advised that they were already aware of the fraudulent purchase, which raised red flags left and right all over. Fraudulent Citizen wanted their lovely new Macbook delivered to a remote Wyoming location, of which I captured on google street view. See? Fraudulent Citizen's Shipping Address - What appears to be a home, a warehouse, or an empty field. Yippee. Who could this sneaky Citizen be? Meanwhile, back at Paypal...Sorry, Mrs. Metzger, we couldn't stop the purchase from going through to your bank account. (The bank account that has a zero balance. The bank account that was only open until I was able to switch my company's payroll direct deposit to my new bank. Zoiks!) Maybe, Mrs. Metzger, you could call your bank to explain about the fraudulent purchase, and they can stop it from posting to your account!

7/24/09, 7:10 AM: Called PNC Bank to let them know what was going on. Yippee, looks like the fraudulent purchase was stopped in its tracks! Rep advised that it looks like Paypal was able to stop the transaction. Sigh of relief. Thought to myself: crisis averted! Fraudulent Citizen thwarted! Justice served! Boo-ya! (Yeah...I said it. Boo-ya. Read it and weep, o ye children of the late 90s).

7/24/09, 7:30 AM: On an afterthought, emailed the eBay seller to let them know what was up. Received a thank-you response. At least the Fraudulent Citizen wouldn't get that sweet laptop.

Fast forward to Monday, 7/27/09, 6:10 PM: Received mail sent via USPS, from PNC, addressed to me. Ripped open. "Hello, your account is overdrafted by $1549.99. Please bring your account up to to zero balance and pay us our $31 NSF fee."

7/27/09, 6:20 PM: Called PNC to ask WTF is going on. Remembered to ask more nicely than "WTF". Remembered that my paycheck was going to be deposited into this account in a couple of days. That would suck! Paycheck wouldn't even cover the negative amount in the bank account... leaving me without the $$ until Paypal reversed the transaction. Yay for paying my last 2 weeks of hard-earned money to a fraud-committing citizen who never received the sweet laptop. Spoke to a rep @ PNC who refused to discuss my own account with me because I couldn't remember the exact dollar amount of my last deposit, even though I gave her my SSN, address, date of birth and how much I weighed upon exiting my mother's vagina on June 21st, 1981. Had to hang up after getting nowhere. Felt somehow simultaneously indignant, unclean, nearly in tears, with a rising-up of perverse hilarity.

7/27/09, 10 PM: Called PNC again, this time armed and ready with the information about my most recent deposit. Spoke to a rep at length; claimed they were unable to put a freeze on my account to reject the paycheck being direct deposited. Oh, P.S., Mrs. Metzger - You now owe us $62 in NSF fees, plus $7 a day every day the account is below zero balance. Sure, we can put in a dispute for you - we need to mail you some paperwork. No, we can't fax or email it. Oh, can you verify the amount and date of your last withdrawal from your account? We need to verify your home address and can't mail you anything until you give us that information. I know we sent you a letter telling you there is minus $1549.99 in your account, but we're not authorized to send you a letter to dispute that until you verify your last withdrawal. My last withdrawal?? Surely you jest? Why don't you ask the third-rate hacker who attempted to buy a Macbook Pro on eBay and failed, only succeeding in wasting my time, money and patience?

7/27/09, 10:15 PM: Called PayPal to ask if anything could be done. Was advised the fraud team is still resolving the fraudulent purchase and the transaction would be reversed when resolution process complete - say about 2 weeks or so. *Gulp*

7/28/09, 8 AM: Called PNC local branch office to ask if they could do anything to help. I offered to do conference call w/Paypal so they could assure PNC that all was kosher & the transaction would eventually be reversed to my bank account. Rep told me that in her 14 years of banking experience, has never known a bank account to be placed on a freeze. (!!!) Said she would look into, and call me back. She expressed her shock that Paypal even allowed the purchase to occur. I expressed my shock that PNC would allow $1500 to be removed from an account with a zero balance & NSF fees to be charged against a customer who has a perfect banking relationship with PNC. Ended the shocking call.

7/28/09, 1:30 PM: Did not hear back from PNC rep. Called again and spoke with a different rep. Was advised that even after this process was resolved, PNC probably would not reimburse me the NSF fees, now nearly $100. Why? Oh, you know - it's such a bad economy, Mrs. Metzger. They are really holding onto these fees now. Dude...a bad economy? Should have thought of that before letting the Fraudulent Citizen steal $1549.99 from an honest taxpayer. ROFL.

7/28/09, 7:38 PM: Anger balloon deflated some. Posted this blog, kicked back and smoked a stogie on my back porch while calmly sipping a single malt scotch on the rocks.

Okay, so the last part wasn't true. But if Fraudulent Citizen ever gets caught...I might just do that. Yes, I just might.



Editor's note: The author would like to make it known that Paypal, while seemingly ridiculed in this post, was actually mostly helpful. PNC, on the other hand, was mostly a pain in the rear.

1990 Poetic Attempt

I think it's really funny to read a poem that you wrote in 1990 - one that your parents had proudly saved and then mailed to you randomly some 18 years later. (Thanks, Mom, I got a kick out of this). I actually kind of remember writing this poem and remember being very pleased with myself. Of course, reading it now I can't help but chuckle at my attempt:

What Is Blue?

Blue is the sky,
blue is the waves,
blue is the color of crystal in caves.
blue is the oceans,
blue is the seas,
blue is the bluebird who sings in the trees.

Blue is the color of butterfly wings,
blue is the color of beautiful things.

Blue is a color of our Texas flag.

Blue is the color of balloons in a bundle,
blue is the color of ooze in a bottle.

Blue is a name of music, as I hear it,
the sound drifts away, in beauty.

Wow. Grammatical errors aside, did you know that the word "bundle", when you're a 9-year-old, rhymes with the word "bottle"? And that the inclusion of the Texas flag in ANY poem adds a certain je ne sais quoi? Also, I'm not sure WHAT in the world I was imagining with regard to the "ooze in a bottle". I mean, we had some pretty interesting Girl Scouts experiments but I don't recall glowing blue ooze in a bottle. Maybe its radioactivity brainwashed my childhood memories. How about the quasi-delusional idea that there is, somewhere out there, a cave filled with lovely blue crystals? I sure would love to visit such a place. Maybe next time I'm in Narnia I could check that out.

The Mighty Q-tip

Something kind of funny happened this morning. I was cleaning out my ears with Q-tips, same thing I have done every day for the last 15 or so years. This time, however, as I improperly inserted the Q-tip into my inner ear canal, something I have also done every day for the last 15 years, the Q-tip end stayed inside my inner ear canal upon Q-tip extraction. I stared dumbly at the naked end of the Q-tip for a moment, contemplating the embarrassment of explaining to the staff in the E.R. that an incompetent 27-year old has just jammed a Q-tip into her ear and was unable to get it out. It's one thing if you're a quirky 5-year old child who is experimenting with the number of peas that can be inserted into various bodily orifices, but quite another to be a (quasi-)functional adult doing the same. Not that I was shoving Q-tips anywhere else but my ears, of course. Hey, this is a g-rated blog, people!

Anyway, I walked around my apartment for a few minutes, trying to figure out what to do. When I moved my jaw around, there was a kind of a muffled squish sensation in my left ear and I heard everything through more of a fuzz than usual. I was suddenly really glad that I had health insurance in case the doctors discovered that I had jammed the Q-tip right into my brain. And then I would have cotton fuzz floating around in my cerebral cortex! And then the surgeons had to perform a risky brain surgery to save my life! No, seriously though, it was kind of funny. I propped up one mirror to another mirror to see if the Q-tip was visible in my ear - to no avail. It had disappeared into the chasm.

Suddenly, I thought of my tweezers! I made a bargain with myself. ONE TRY, and if I couldn't get it out, Chris and I would grab a couple of good books and spend a long, pleasurable afternoon waiting in the E.R. while the doctors first attended to those with real emergencies. I carefully inserted the tweezers into my inner ear canal (when will I ever learn?? 'Cause when you jam one thing into your ear, the perfect solution is to jam another thing into your ear to get the first thing out.)

So, dearest reader, I am sure you're on the edge of your seat with excited anticipation, awaiting the climax of the story. Can I have a drum rollllll please?

SUCCESS! E.R. trip avoided! Embarrassment saved! Q-tip lesson learned! All this without one single second of panic. I feel endlessly wiser than I did pre-Q-tip-insertion.

Typical.

A nice family photo, made better by a certain someone's insanity.
It must be contagious, because the next pic I snapped looked like this:

Wreath Whoops

Hahahaha! Okay, so Cameron, Chris and I were standing in the hallway outside my apartment (Cameron lives across the hall from me) and we were quasi-laughing at my old lady neighbor's wreath hanging on her door. We're standing there kind of staring at it and it dawns on me that the overly-large and completely bare wreath has a string of Christmas lights attached to it. Not only that, but the wreath is hanging treacherously from her doorknocker by the end of the cord on the string of lights. Mind you, the lights are not plugged in, so we are talking about a large naked wreath with a string of old, unused lights awkwardly wrapped around it. Of course, since I have to touch EVERYTHING I see, I went up to the wreath and kind of jostled it a little bit, just to see what would happen. You know where this is going, right...the wreath CRASHED to the ground in one fell swoop. I backed away with my hands up, as if to alleviate responsibility from myself. We all stood there for kind of a dumb second or two, looking around like we had been caught with our hands in a cookie jar. At least, this is how I manifested my feelings at the time. I absolutely refused to put the wreath back on the door, because of course she would have opened her door the NANOSECOND I attempted to reattach the godawful wreath. And that would have been quite an interesting explanation. **Editor's note: After reading this post, Chris demanded I mention that he swooped in to gallantly save the day and reattach the wreath. So, from me to you, Chris: I Thank God for your supreme superhero likeness. :-)

On a side note...the other day, Chris noticed that the plastic white bird that had previously been cutely perched in MY appropriately sized & wonderfully decorated wreath had gone mysteriously missing. Who in HECK steals a plastic 3" bird from someone's CHRISTMAS WREATH???? I mean, it's not like it could be re-gifted. Or even used as a cat toy. Revenge, p'raps? By a certain elderly woman whose wreath was violated? The truth will forever remain unknown...

Airport awesomeness

Amazingly awkward conversation Chris and I had while waiting for our (delayed) plane to arrive at Chicago O'Hare airport:

2 small children who don't know each other were playing "Ring Around the Rosey" nearby, very loudly and cutely, among a throng of 176 passengers waiting to board flight 730 to BWI.

"That's so cute!" I said. Chris looked over at the two kids and nodded.

"That's funny, they just met and they're already playing together!" I exclaimed. "I wish adults could do that. I think WE should start playing with random strangers in the airport."

Insert long, awkward pause.

"Hmm", I added, somewhat hastily. "That sounded really, really wrong."

A nearby passenger burst into laughter.

"Well, honey," Chris retorted, "At least you didn't say we should play with strange CHILDREN in the airport."

I really think we should work on our quiet voices.

Jesus....Shaves?

This is great....just great!

Haha...this is so much fun. By "this" I mean Chris of course. Awesomeness.

The Flood

I was semi-hoping that my days of toilet embarrassments were over; alas, I endured the motherload of all awkwardly mortifying moments 2 weeks ago. As you can see, it took me some time to recover enough from The Incident to write about it, so with much trepidation and anxiety, here goes.

So Chris and I are visiting his parents in PA for the weekend, along with his younger sister. Now, I'll just say right here that if I didn't feel comfortable around his family or had just met them, this story would rate a lot higher on the mortified scale. But, you'll see that regardless...it's pretty awful.

Anyway, it was Saturday morning. We've all eaten a delicious filling breakfast, and that very breakfast was on its way through my system and ready to meet its end in the ceramic throne. I headed to the bathroom to do just that. Now, this toilet has a tendency to, shall we say, overflow. Knowing this, I reminded myself to perform a courtesy flush "halfway through". This was successfully performed; I completed my business (trying to keep out the details here, but falling short of rated G), closed the lid, flushed and started the shower. Somewhere between taking off my shirt and stepping over to adjust the temperature of the shower, I noticed I was standing in what felt like a small ocean. Glancing down, I saw that the toilet had, in fact, become a small waterfall. Now, I could have done one of several things here. I could have run into the hallway, shirtless and screaming for help. I could have simply grabbed the towel I had laid out, threw it around myself and run into the hallway screaming for help. But no, my brain insisted that I must first turn off the shower. Then my brain insisted that I locate my t-shirt and put it back on even amid my panic. If you have never attempted to get dressed in a panic, I wouldn't recommend it. Suddenly you become extremely uncoordinated, as if you had regressed to the age of 2 and were attempting to clothe yourself in a snowsuit. Needless to say, my delay was costly. After successfully re-dressing myself, I then ran into the hallway screaming for help. Meanwhile, the toilet waterfall continued to gain in speed and volume like a stream aspiring to become Niagara Falls. Chris responded to my call for help, racing down the hall and immediately went for the shut-off valve behind the toilet. (Now, why didn't I think of that?) Alas, the valve was stuck, and it took a few tries before it was successfully shut off and the flood stopped its momentous rush. At this point Chris opened the toilet lid before I could warn him that there was some solid matter still floating gleefully inside, post-courtesy flush. He gagged in revulsion and scrambled for towels to start mopping up the ocean of poopwater.

The aftermath of The Flood went something like this: 2 inches of water covered the bathroom floor & linen closet, flowed into the hallway and into one of the nearby bedrooms and cascaded like a summer rain through the floorboards and into the basement where Chris' sister was splashed in the eye while attempting to catch the fallout in a large bucket.

But hey, at least I had my shirt on!

Blueberry Beetle

Happily eating blueberries...about 3/4 of the way through them...happened to glance in the container and spotted THIS...

Yup...a dead beetle... *gag*