I apologize for the ‘technical difficulties’ with my blog. As Scary Fairy pointed out in her email ‘it’s funny, but not enough to read fifteen times’. I had a hiccup. Well, not me—Little Bro, which is my laptop’s name.
But I got phished, by some wanker in Nigeria. He got the sign in and password to my checking account – the American one. It was the representative from Wachovia’s Fraud Prevention who unraveled the dastardly plot and located the phish. “Your account was accessed by a site in Nigeria” she told me. Ever mindful of Pinkie and her list of ‘Ethnic Guys’, I quickly defended myself. “Nigerian guys are not on the list…not that I’ve ‘done’ one already. And I’m not on any Nigerian Dating sites…honestly.”
I guess Fraud Prevention has heard it all; she didn’t turn a hair. “No, you replied to what you thought was an email from the bank and they counted your keystrokes.” It was a major nuisance, closing and reopening the account with a new number. I also upgraded my security program, and reconfiguring the firewall played havoc with my settings, causing the problems with Live Spaces. But it isolated and killed a couple viruses.
I got phished again the other day –unsuccessfully for them this time. I got a very ‘official’ looking email from the IRS. The subject line said something like ‘re: Claim 814326753497840/1’. Truthfully, the first thing I thought was “Holy Shit! The IRS has my email address!” The second thing was “I paid my goddamned taxes; they cashed the check in a New York minute”. Then I realized “Wait a minute…It should be IRS.gov, not IRS.com.” Not very slick, Nigerian Guy. I zapped it posthaste.
On to more cheerful subjects, I went shopping. And then I went shopping again. Seriously, I don’t really have time for shopping…at least a lot. The weather has changed, probably temporary, but there’s a big yellow thingy in the sky that people say is called ‘Sun’. It’s lovely to be outside. BooBoo brought my patio furniture from storage, and now I can sit outside in my tranquil back garden. I paid Eamonn and Amy in left over American dollars to come and tidy it up.
BooBoo and I did lunch with Mischa and baby Mia, eating in Café Rouge’s lovely garden. It was delightful. Except for BooBoo. She’d bought Mia an early birthday pressie –adorable pink trainers with squeakers in the heels. Mia has just started walking. Mischa put them on her, and Mia just had to try them out. Squeak! Squeak! Squeak! The other diners in the garden were not amused. I wanted to strangle BooBoo.
Saturday morning was Shul; it was a special Atzma’ut service for Israel’s 60th Birthday, and the theme was ‘Bring Your Own Israeli to services’. It’s too bad Moshe couldn’t pop over for the weekend, but lots of other members brought their Israelis so it was jolly good fun. I had forgotten that there was a special luncheon and had made plans to go to the Oatlands Faire with Pinkie in the afternoon, which I had to cancel.
The luncheon was…wow. I never saw so much food, especially food that I had no bloody clue what it was. I ended up eating a lot of things I never knew I even liked.
Then we played a game. Rabbi Jackie is very fond of educational religious games. Each table was a kibbutz. We had to name our kibbutz, decide what we grew or raised, and come up with our kibbutz’ ‘manifesto’ or charter. We had to bargain with the other kibbuzes for stuff we needed and didn’t grow or make ourselves. We had to elect officers. I fervently wished I was at the Oatlands Faire with Pinkie.
My fellow kibbutniks didn’t go for ‘Kibbutz Circle Mezzuzah’, (that is actually the name of a real ranch in Texas), and went with something trite like Kibbutz Shalom. Being an only child and a tiny bit self-centered, I never played well with other children; I haven’t improved with age. I impatiently listened to a diatribe on how we should slaughter the chickens we don’t really have humanely as well as shehita (the ritual Jewish method so it’s kosher). “Hey, chicken, you’re gonna die now. Prepare to meet Mr. Purdue in that great barnyard in the sky.”
I did tell my comrades that I am strongly anti-kibbutz, and I am. It is a concept that is outmoded and outdated and puts a debilitating drain on Israel’s already stretched financial resources. This is not sarcasm; that’s really what I think. And the women dress badly. I really didn’t want to spend our precious kibbutz gelt on grain and livestock and shit like that. I suggested that we buy …clothes. And open a modest Neiman Marcus. Yeah…I got voted off the island. I mean the kibbutz.
Oh, to be in England 