Juuuust kidding.
Last week mrguy found his inbox filled with hundreds of spam emails. He consulted "doctor internet" to see what might have happened, and found a helpful site that directed him to look into each email. Sure enough, he found that one of the emails was from a lending site, confirming his new account.
He figured out that the lender is super loose (all it takes is an email), and called to cancel this spurious account. Then he figured out that the scammer already used the account to buy a laptop that was en route to our address. After more research mrguy learned that the mailing address usually gets changed in these scams. So he kept on top of the shipper, learned that a local UPS store was the destination, hopped in the car, got to the store and beat the scammer to the laptop, which is now headed back to where it came from.
Wow.
mrguy is a stud.
April 21, 2019
April 13, 2019
A Wild Memorial To A Liberated Woman
As readers of mrsguy are aware, the windup to our friend's memorial luncheon was epic.
It was roughly a week and a half of mom calling up every child to ask what the plans were for the memorial, and her immediately forgetting. We put together calendars, notes, and reminders, but they didn't work. Her capacity for worry was tremendous. My own response was to keep it light and jokey because I realized that she wasn't ever going to remember the details.
The day of the luncheon I got there at 9. It's all fine. I get a parking space right out front. We have about three hours to get ready. Eventually we get in the car, mom buckles herself in, turns to me and says:
"So where are we going?"
That, my friends, was the punchline to a week or so of torture.
But who cares. It was the day, I was in control, it was happening. I teased her by asking where she thought we were going, and she really didn't know. She thought we could go clothes shopping or to my house to see the cats. I told her that I had taken the day off work and we were going to the memorial. "We don't have to do that," she said. "Let's go to your house and see the cats." For real, People!
The luncheon was a trip. We were in a small banquet room with lots of walkers for the 91-year-olds, their children my age, and our friend's admirers. Many of the old people were known in this room by their nicknames: Dit, Punk, Biney, Wink, Boy. There was an asparagus heiress and people who were relatives of General Custer who all disagreed about whether or not he was an ass. And all of our friend's caregivers, who were soooo sweet, and even one rock star who, after he left for a doctor appointment, was replaced to my left by his sister who grew up with "My brother the rock star". She was awesome. Everybody told risque stories. Our host couldn't cope and had to leave. The waiter seemed to be having some sort of nervous breakdown and was pretty passive aggressive. The whole thing was a trip.
It was definitely worth doing, and later in the week mom thanked my sister (not me) for taking her.
Wish I'd been there ;)
It was roughly a week and a half of mom calling up every child to ask what the plans were for the memorial, and her immediately forgetting. We put together calendars, notes, and reminders, but they didn't work. Her capacity for worry was tremendous. My own response was to keep it light and jokey because I realized that she wasn't ever going to remember the details.
The day of the luncheon I got there at 9. It's all fine. I get a parking space right out front. We have about three hours to get ready. Eventually we get in the car, mom buckles herself in, turns to me and says:
"So where are we going?"
That, my friends, was the punchline to a week or so of torture.
But who cares. It was the day, I was in control, it was happening. I teased her by asking where she thought we were going, and she really didn't know. She thought we could go clothes shopping or to my house to see the cats. I told her that I had taken the day off work and we were going to the memorial. "We don't have to do that," she said. "Let's go to your house and see the cats." For real, People!
The luncheon was a trip. We were in a small banquet room with lots of walkers for the 91-year-olds, their children my age, and our friend's admirers. Many of the old people were known in this room by their nicknames: Dit, Punk, Biney, Wink, Boy. There was an asparagus heiress and people who were relatives of General Custer who all disagreed about whether or not he was an ass. And all of our friend's caregivers, who were soooo sweet, and even one rock star who, after he left for a doctor appointment, was replaced to my left by his sister who grew up with "My brother the rock star". She was awesome. Everybody told risque stories. Our host couldn't cope and had to leave. The waiter seemed to be having some sort of nervous breakdown and was pretty passive aggressive. The whole thing was a trip.
It was definitely worth doing, and later in the week mom thanked my sister (not me) for taking her.
Wish I'd been there ;)
April 6, 2019
Sumo News, 2019 Edition
One day during what my Facebook friends who draw call "inktober", I posted a photo of my own inktober, a tattoo in honor of Akebono, the 64th yokozuna. About twenty minutes later my patented slow walk (tm) took me past the house of a friend and neighbor. He must have seen my post and he came out of his house to greet me. "Is it true that you know about sumo? Could you please step into our kitchen for a minute and make my wife really happy?" Turns out that his wife, who I already really like, really wanted to know about sumo.
And now she does. We've watched three bashos together, eaten piles of Japanese snacks and consumed the blissful aroma of cold sake in cedar cups. So much fun.
I'm not sure how I haven't taken photos of our crazy bonanza of snacks, but it's been really awesome. Our friend is really hooked. She has the books and the t-shirts and the questions and knows so many of the things. It is super fun. I never imagined, after having been introduced to sumo by a woman that I would find another person besides mrguy who would have an interest in watching sumo. And that it would be another woman. What?
Yesterday she texted me photos of a random person she met at Baskin Robbins who wanted to know about her Tachiai shirt (Tachiai is one of the main English language sumo blogs). They had a great conversation during which he revealed that he's a journalist and then he texted her selfies of himself with well-known sumotori. He thought it was pretty funny that we eat clam dip and sembei and watch the basho together.
I am a lucky person. Thank you, world.
April 5, 2019
And In DNA News
I am an avid genealogist and user of the various DNA services available. With every DNA match I see, I can pretty much tell how these people are connected to me. I recognize their last name, or the name of the people they're researching. Recently, however, I found a new match that's puzzling.
This person is male, and the amount of DNA we share identifies him as a first cousin-ish. He shares more DNA with me than my 1st cousin once removed, who is also a DNA match. So it's pretty likely that "new guy" actually is a first cousin. I sent him a message asking if he would like to share information. He has not responded and has not logged in for two months.
Similarly, a new DNA match showed up on a different DNA service. It's a woman, with the same last name as the man on the first service. She shares less DNA with me than the man, in a proportion which would make her likely his child. I have sent her a message and have not gotten a response. Interesting side note is that if you Google her name, it returns no hits. How often does that happen? Never.
I now wonder whether there is a deeper mystery.
I know of no genetic first cousins on my mom's side. The mama had a sibling who raised an adopted child from the spouse's first marriage. The only possibilities that I can think of for a first cousin are that there was a hidden child who was then put up for adoption. My grandmother did have a year in high school in which she went off to two different schools in different parts of the state for the two halves of the year. An out of wedlock child could have been concealed during the summers before or after that year. The man who appears to be a first cousin could be the son of that child. But that sounds unlikely in this family, where my grandmother had a half sister from her dad's first marriage who was raised in the same town by an aunt but considered a sibling.
Alternately, my mom's sibling could have had a child that we never knew about. I think that this is more likely the case, but the fact that I haven't had any responses to my messages makes me wonder whether this isn't someone researching their own roots, but that the DNA came from a crime scene and not living people.
I hope that this person (or these people) are living and get in contact so we can clear up the mystery.
This person is male, and the amount of DNA we share identifies him as a first cousin-ish. He shares more DNA with me than my 1st cousin once removed, who is also a DNA match. So it's pretty likely that "new guy" actually is a first cousin. I sent him a message asking if he would like to share information. He has not responded and has not logged in for two months.
Similarly, a new DNA match showed up on a different DNA service. It's a woman, with the same last name as the man on the first service. She shares less DNA with me than the man, in a proportion which would make her likely his child. I have sent her a message and have not gotten a response. Interesting side note is that if you Google her name, it returns no hits. How often does that happen? Never.
I now wonder whether there is a deeper mystery.
I know of no genetic first cousins on my mom's side. The mama had a sibling who raised an adopted child from the spouse's first marriage. The only possibilities that I can think of for a first cousin are that there was a hidden child who was then put up for adoption. My grandmother did have a year in high school in which she went off to two different schools in different parts of the state for the two halves of the year. An out of wedlock child could have been concealed during the summers before or after that year. The man who appears to be a first cousin could be the son of that child. But that sounds unlikely in this family, where my grandmother had a half sister from her dad's first marriage who was raised in the same town by an aunt but considered a sibling.
Alternately, my mom's sibling could have had a child that we never knew about. I think that this is more likely the case, but the fact that I haven't had any responses to my messages makes me wonder whether this isn't someone researching their own roots, but that the DNA came from a crime scene and not living people.
I hope that this person (or these people) are living and get in contact so we can clear up the mystery.
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