THIEF

For the second time in my life, I have experienced identity theft. Once about 8-10 years ago, and now. Dick and I have become pretty anal about never sharing our credit card number over the phone and very careful even on the internet when it is encrypted. But the only thing which we never do----and did, carelessly, while on vacation in March, was give our card to the server in a restaurant to pay our bill. It must have been then. NEVER again do I hand that card to another person who is not my family. When they bring the bill, they will have to deal with me following them to the credit card machine!

Luckily, Chase, our credit card company, caught the hacker. It amazes me they catch someone trying to use your account. They notified us immediately and we closed down our account and they gave us new Visas. It is a great company to take care of theft. I had my new card number memorized in about 10 minutes, so all is good. (For anyone raising their eyeballs at that, I admit to having a numbers thing. I still know my 13-digit VIN number off my 1974 green Chevy Vega and my dad's serial number when he was in the Army.)

Dick's retirement party is tomorrow. He teaches til the 10th and then retirement starts. Things really won't feel any different until fall when he is still at the cabin in late August and September and not sitting in a PT class. Sam is able to come tomorrow!

Our animal control officer just left. I had him set a raccoon trap in our yard. One recent morning I happen to look down into my window well and there were 3 very large piles of feces. Richie and I wondered who had paid us a visit, so we googled images of "animal poop." Instantly we knew that we had a raccoon who preferred to do his business in private. It was cleaned up and about a week later, it happened again. I have pictures, but I am going to restrain myself from publishing them. We cleaned it up (we as in Richie) again and I poured a gallon of beach in the well. Saw 2 more live raccoons in the neighborhood this week. We battened down the window wells with plywood and bricks and now animal control is setting a trap. One across the street too, I guess. I'm anxious to see if we trap one!!

We are packing up for the lake. Anxious to get up there.