Altoona, IA - The Sibs and In-Laws Reunion

We’re gone most of the year, traveling and exploring in our RV so we miss out on family get-togethers. And, that’s a shame since we have such a fun family. Well, today we took care of that and got together at one of Gary’s sister’s homes. I have to give credit to Cathy, one of Gary’s sisters, who actually had the idea and brought it to fruition. She was the one who put the date together after talking with us all. This wasn’t easy since Tom, Cathy’s husband was on a Continental Divide bicycle trip for much of September, while Tom, Dawn’s husband, had a fishing trip also scheduled in September. Gary and I were scheduled to leave on September 27 so there were very few days when all 6 of us could actually be in the same state, much less in the same home. But, she found the date, September 20 and it was on our calendars. (I’m late in writing about this since I have been lolling.)

Here are Gary and I (natch.)


Here are Dawn and Tom, who own the boat we're all tooling around in. 

And, here are Cathy and Tom who live in Johnston near our campground in Altoona. 

Cathy & Tom and Gary and I drove over to Swisher where Dawn and Tom live and took a cool ride in their boat in the afternoon. Here we all are in the boat tooling down the ‘Rez’ as the locals call it. Beautiful weather: no clouds, sunny and a bit of a breeze - such that we had our long pants on and Dawn, who was in shorts, covered up with a blanket.

Great drive around the lake.

Dinner afterwards. Dawn and Tom cooked chicken while the rest of us brought other salads and things. Fun meal. This is the second year we’ve done this - gotta keep up this new tradition.
‘Hey, did you ever realize that the word ‘bed’ actually looks like a bed?’
                Anonymous

Altoona, IA - Scammin'

Amazing isn’t it how many scammers there are in the world? Who want to cheat honest, hard working people out of the fruits of their labors. We don’t usually come into contact with many but we met a doozie recently. It all began when we decided to decrease the size of our storage unit - to decrease the costs associated with it. We‘ve been thinking about it and had actually signed up for 2 months in Des Moines next year to take care of this. We mentioned this to Cathy, Gary’s sister, who’s tuned in to furniture since she used to be a designer for a furniture store in town. She told us of a place which took consignment furniture so, we thought, why not check it out? We did and decided to see what we could do in the short time we had left here in Des Moines.

Our first concern was that if it didn’t sell within the 90 days that this consignment store allotted, then what? We would be in Arizona with no plans of returning. Oops. We had taken some pictures into the shop and, once they looked at them, they assured us that they would sell. We’re looking at the two Mission-style love seats, the Mission-style coffee table and the 2 Mission-style end tables. I always thought that this was a pretty cool living room. And, it was so cosy with company to talk. But it was the view out the windows that sold the house - a pond with ducks and geese on it.

But, before we took it over, we decided to list it all on Craig’s List first. We wanted to check all opportunities. I wrote up several ads, put in some pictures and had my ads on Craig’s list for Des Moines. The next morning, at 7:00 sharp, I heard the phone ‘bing’, signaling that a text message had come through. Wow, that was fast, I thought. It was someone who wanted to know if we still had the furniture for sale. He was interested in it for a gift and was working for Turner Corp in a very rural area with little access to e-mail and phone. (Hmmm - then why can he text?) We texted back and forth but continued with our daily routine. On the chance that this was legit, we re-opened our PayPal acc’t for his payment. Finally, on our way out to do some errands, we got a text from him telling us that his moving company needed an up-front payment of $1400 but that he had included that in the money he sent to Paypal for the furniture. He also told us that PayPal would send us an e-mail about the arrival of the money into our account but that sometime PayPal e-mails got caught in “Junk’ mail and, could we please check our Junk e-mail.

Nope. This is a definitely a scam and we’re not playing any more with it. It was interesting for a bit but this is not real. So, we dropped it - we didn’t text him back. A few hours later, we got an e-mail from him: ‘ WHAT’S GOING ON THERE?’ What chutzpah!!! Chiding us for not answering. Then we checked our ‘Junk’ e-mail and found a PayPal e-mail. My word, it had the PayPal logo, the PayPal seal, the signature of the President and the CFO, it had a guarantee that the money in our account was safe. No wonder people get caught in scams like this. They’d check this e-mail, get an assurance that their money was guaranteed and send out $1400. These scammers are good.

Funny thing, we got another text from a second scammer: same wording except this guy was a soldier on deployment and couldn’t get phone calls and e-mails either - just text me, he said. Do they copy each other’s scams? Do they work in the same office? Who knows? We also got several others that were not as elaborate and I just texted back: ‘Please call.’ They’ll never call - phone calls can be traced.
An interesting slice of the underside of life.