Sunday Stealing

From Swap Bot 

Would you rather....

1. Live on a boat or in a treehouse? Boat

2. No computer use for a year or no sweets for a year? Sweets

3. Have $2,000 right now or be given $100 every month for the rest of your life? $100/month

4. Be an astronaut or an athlete? Athlete

5. Have 50 good friends or only one best friend? 50 good friends

6. Have bright blue teeth or bright blue hair? Bright blue hair

7. Have the power of flight or the power of invisibility? Power of flight

8. Have a fun friend who is snarky or a boring friend who is kind? Boring and kind

9. Be incredibly rich but without love or be poor but have a happy marriage? Poor but happy

10. Have a freezing cold shower every day or a pleasant hot shower once a week? This is the only hard one! Cold daily shower.

11. Be an only child or have many siblings? Many siblings

12. Quit video games forever or live in a desert for a month? Quit video games

13. Go on a one week trip to a foreign country of your choice or a month long trip in your own country? Month long vacation in New York City

14. Celebrate your birthday every day or go on your favorite holiday once a year? Once a year

15. If fish could talk, what would you ask them? "Do you ever hurt?" They have such tiny brains, I wonder if they process and feel pain.

Look who got a single!

Hopefully Anthony Rizzo's hitless streak is over. Judging by his reaction to landing on first base, I suspect I'm not the only one who petitioned the Lord for solid contact today. 

In other news, the Cubs prevailed over the (hiss!) Cardinals in an amazing see-saw game. And the Cubs spectacular radio play-by-play man, Pat Hughes, was inducted into the Hall of Fame.

What a day!

God I love baseball!

One week and $38 later

Yesterday I took my Social Security form to the UPS Store. There'd been no word from the postal service about that envelope's whereabouts. I've been so fixated on how vulnerable a missing form containing my address, signature and SSN makes me to identity theft that I rather forgot it meant that Social Security doesn't have my forms.

I certainly wasn't going back to my local post office. I'd spent $8.80 for Ground Advantage and got nothing (literally) for my pains. When I checked USPS Tracking all I kept seeing was that my envelope was "received" 7/14. No movement, no updates as to its whereabouts.

So I turned to the UPS Store. I printed a cover letter, explaining to the lucky Social Security bureaucrat who receives it that this form was a duplicate, the original lost in the mail. And, of course, a new version of the form for me to sign. And then, of course, I had to have it sent with tracking and recipient signature. Total: $38.36. 

But I'm already getting notices from UPS, letting me know where my package is every step of the way. So it was worth it.

Except for this: As of 10:44 this morning, my original envelope somehow turned up. After a week of languishing somewhere, it's on its way to the Social Security Office. 

On the one hand, I've now spent $47 for a form to travel 12 miles. Which sucks.

On the other hand, it's good news. After all, it means no one is using my SSN to obtain a fake passport or a lease on a Ford Explorer from a dealership in Rancho Cucamonga. And that's not small.