get this

i am a victim of FRAUD!

really!

i went to the grocery store on monday night and embarassingly, my card was rejected. but not in the old-fashioned "insufficient funds" kind of way. this time it was in the "limited card use - refer customer to branch" kind of way. so i started to sweat a little, while trying not to let on that i was having mild cardiac arrest. i left the grocery store with lisa, strolled back to her / andrew's place, numbed my brain out with cable (oh, sweet, sweet cable) and then dragged my butt home. i tried to access my bank account on line before bed but nope, wasn't happening. so i crashed out and woke up at 2:45 AM with a full panic attack (you know, the kind of panic attack where you try to force yourself to cry so it will break, but you're so panicky that you can't even do that? it was definitely not as bad as the one panic attack i had at age 20 where i couldn't move while i was washing my hair in the shower. i thought someone was going to have to peel me out of the shower but like any "attack", it passed. but i digress...). i got back to sleep maybe 45 minutes later after putting in my stupid nightguard to help my jaw relax and woke up 3 hours later in order to get to work. bit of a groggy day, and at lunch i called my bank.

another digression - i have a really old bank card. the top coating of plastic was peeling away, and i ordered another bank card and got one, but the old one was such a good conversation starter that i just couldn't get rid of it until it officially died. which it did on monday. point is, i had another card and all i had to do was use it and it would be activated. it all seemed so simple until the woman on the phone told me that i would have to go into a bank branch and tell them that face-to-face. so i had to leave work early, sweat on the skytrain and run to the bank before it closed so i could tell my sob story to the teller. she had me repeat my story twice, and then like the lady on the phone, essentially put me on hold while she stared blankly at the screen and called the manager over. he asked me again why i had come (apologies, bankers, i got a little salty at this point) and then told me that my card had been tagged because of potential fraud.

so then he escorted me (and kept calling me miss!) up to the offices and had me wait to meet a rep. my rep was sooooo nice and we talked through the whole thing. turns out that i have very set patterns. grocery stores, grocery stores, more grocery stores, bills, clothing stores, grocery stores, so it was pretty easy to pick out the irregularities. grocery store, $30, ATM $60, $500, $500, $400, $300, grocery store $30. uh, the three digit ones would be the fraud. those pesky sneaky thieves got $800 though they tried for more.

long story, short.... wait, it's long already... well, i got the money back, had to change my PIN and now am only ever using official bank machines and i'm going to start carrying a large billfold (yah, right). although, honestly it's so arbitrary as to when the criminalz got my info. it honestly could have been anywhere. the weird part was when my rep asked me where i'd been the day the money was taken out. luckily, i was with people for most of the day, and then i was with mr. harry potter for the night. that's an adequate alibi right? "i was looking for the deathly hallows!" while the lightbulb swings overhead.

i really liked the woman who helped me. i might even see her at the farmers market on saturday since she said that she lives in the neighbourhood and has never gone. i'm excited because she was nice, but at the same time, what do you talk about with the woman who fought crime in your bank account? i'm scared it's going to be all jokes about PINs and other lame ATM jokes ("hide your password! want some kale?").

so that was the "mayjah" drama of the week. then on tuesday night, after it was all settled, i got my period at 2:45 AM. sick joke. so wednesday was a bit of a groggy day too. i went for a swim at english bay last night which was amazing and refreshing - fecal chloroforms be damned! it was lovely. then my friend and i got dinner and ate it at the beach with the hordes of fireworks freaks. we finished our dinner too early though and didn't want to wait another hour and a half until the sky exploded so we went back to my friend's place and watched cable. (oh sweet, sweet cable - see what i mean about patterns?)

and now it's thursday, which means tomorrow is friday and i am almost done week 3 at le job. it's been a rough week but it's been ok. just pretty tiring.

now to yoga (a home practice cuz the class i was going to go to is just too close to when i get home and i have to get all caught up on dlisted and perezhilton and laineygossip), then food, then maybe some cuddling with the new yorker. talk of the town, indeed.