It's Me Again, Harold

I'm giving the old college try, having a blog once again. I will try hard to be better about blogging than I was on the last one, even if all I post is a sentence or two.

We had a very nice Christmas with family. Christmas Eve at Katie and Rick's. (See "Pages" for the names of our kids.)  Macie, Damian, Mitch, Catherine, Bobby, Aremy, Melanie and Emily were also there. (Not Audi's Emily.) They served prime rib with all the fixins. Baby Emilia was popular! She was 7 weeks old and had changed so much since Thanksgiving as babies do. She was holding her head up and looking around.  Christmas Day, we had dinner at Derek and Vickie's, with Josh, Natalie, Owen, Carol, Larry, Amy and Scott. Turkey dinner was served. Afterwards we went to Elijah and Josie's and saw Stella Jo and the new baby boy, Banks. Both are adorable, of course! 

At the dinner table, the subject of scammers came up. There is a scam going around where a person pretends to not figure out what is on his cell phone and hands it to you. Then once the unsuspecting person tries to hand it back, the guy won't take it. He insists you give him money or a credit card, intimidating you. Teenagers especially fall prey to this scam. Or a person walks up to you and holds his phone out but moves it across your mid-section. It is picking up the info on your credit cards and debit cards!

We have known that your credit card and debit card info can be hacked online. Banks now recommend not to use these when purchasing goods online, rather, use a service like PayPal or Venmo. When a hacker gets into your banking account, they can clean it out, leaving you nothing. 

Even cash is not safe. If you sell something and the buyer gives you cash, it is best if you have one of the pens to mark the money to let you know if it is counterfeit or not. If you deposit counterfeit money, it's on you, the bank won't allow you to use it, it's just paper at that point. 

So many evil people out in the world today; one cannot be too safe. We have been losing gasoline in our car at nighttime. Our bedroom is on the back of the house, so we don't hear anything. We will be getting a locking gas cap. Or a pit bull. Haha, not really. Rottweilers are my favorite breed of big dog, but I will admire them from afar. We don't have a pet.