Is it still singing if it isn't actually musical?

I live in a small apartment building and I have learned that sound carries pretty well in it. I don't know if it is due to old construction or maybe the stair wells are just effective conductors of sound, or perhaps it is just because everyone who lives here was either a rhino or an elephant in a former life, but it is rarely quiet here. A few months ago, a new woman moved into the building. She doesn't live directly under me, but rather her apartment is diagonally below mine if that makes any sense. She seems to be a nice enough person - when I do bump into her she is always friendly and polite and kind of quiet. When she is in her apartment, however, it is a totally different story. She watches t.v., listens to the radio, and talks on her phone all at full volume. She often has noisy friends over and they clomp up and down the stairs and cackle like crazy people in the hallways, having fun and annoying everyone else.

She also sings. At least, I guess you can call it singing. It isn't as though it is particularly musical but it also isn't quite like a dog howling. If there is some in-between point, then that is what I would call it. Some hybrid like 'showling' or 'hinging.' Whatever it is, it is very loud. And, for some reason, it is usually the same song over and over.

I admit to singing in the shower a few times a week and I definitely like to boogie down with some tunes on my stereo in my apartment. I have even embarassed myself by losing control and singing along with my ipod on the street. I certainly don't have a professional voice but as far as I can tell, I can at least carry a tune and sing on key. At least, I think so. No one has complained, anyway.

So that brings up my actual question - if the noise being made is just noise with nothing musical about it, is it really singing or just caterwauling? And if it really is just noise, should I say anything? I mean, my neighbor downstairs really seems to enjoy her singing so who am I to tell her that it makes me want to go spontaneously deaf at times? Which is the greater act of rudeness - her intrusion on the sanctuary of my aparment or my honest opinion of her lack of skill?

In reality, I know that I could never in a million years actually hurt someone's feelings that way. I may think the nasty thoughts and resent the need for earplugs, but when it comes to a choice of a little quiet or making someone feel bad about enjoying herself in such a harmless way, the decision is an easy one - I will just suck it up, put in my earbuds, and turn up the volume on my ipod. It isn't because I am a saint or anything. It is because I believe in what comes around, goes around, and that includes bad behavior.

Her loud parties are another story - with those, she has two choices: either invite me in for a drink or listen to me complain. I have a big vocabulary and can whine for hours if I feel it is necessary.

Keystone cops and firemen - a free show out my window

This morning was an unusually noisy one. I live on a busy street that every fire truck in the city seems to use to get from one side of town to the other, so traffic is always pretty loud. For the most part, I am pretty used to it and have learned to go into a pseudo coma in order to get a good night's sleep. At about 5am this morning, however, the fire trucks didn't just go speeding up the street as per usual. Instead, they stopped right in front of my building and for some reason, kept blasting the siren even though they had clearly reached their destination. Even I can't sleep through screeching sirens right under my window.

At first when I woke up, I thought maybe the crazy new alarm system in my building had gone off and the fire department had shown up in response. The system seems to go off if you just think about mentioning the word fire. It is full of bugs that the property owners are trying to work out and all of us in the building have just learned to ignore it. I stuck my head out into the hallway to see what was going on as did several of my neighbors. People in my building wear interesting things to sleep in, by the way. Who knew they made Curious George pajamas that fit adult men?

Eventually after a very sleepy, confused conversation, we all decided that it wasn't our building on fire and the property manager should turn off the stupid alarm, go talk to the firemen and tell them to go away so we could all try to go back to sleep for a while. I watched the manager turn off the alarm but was a little concerned to notice that I could still hear it ringing. Maybe I was developing tintinnitis from the stupid thing? Imagine that - at 35 years old I will spend the rest of my life dealing with ringing ears and hearing loss and screaming 'what?' at people. I followed the manager downstairs so he could talk to the firemen and I could ask them to turn off their stupid siren. When we got outside, I realized that while it was no secret that I am a little crazy, I wasn't imagining things or hallucinating and the ringing was actually coming from an apartment building across the street that really WAS on fire and the sirens were from police cars and an ambulance that were trying to get through the beginnings of rush hour traffic.

Burning buildings are stinky. They reek worse than poopy diapers. The smoke is a nasty black color and because this morning was very foggy, it just hung very low over the street and didn't dissipate. When I opened the front door of the building to see what was happening, my eyes started to sting and there was a nasty chemical taste in my mouth. They say curiosity killed the cat but what about noxious burning buildings killing the neighbors?

I went back up to the sanctuary of my apartment, had a healthy breakfast of chocolate chip cookies and tea, and started watching the show out my window. The buildings on my street are built in the typical San Francisco style: maybe a 6-12 gap exists between buildings, but most are built flush to each other. This means that if one building is on fire, the rest could quickly go up in flames as well. I am sure there are all sorts of building codes that require special materials to be incorporated into the walls to help create firebreaks, but who wants to trust in that? In very short order, all the buildings on that side of the street for my block had been evacuated. I was interested to see that it wasn't just people in my building that sleep in some very interesting things - it seems my whole block is much more creative when it comes to pajamas than I am.

By this time, my street was in chaos. Some police cars had finally blocked off the intersection and were trying to clear up the traffic jam by redirecting drivers to some of the smaller side streets. A few helicopters were buzzing around overhead and now that the buildings were evacuated, the firemen were preparing to go in and save the day.

I can't imagine what kind of nerve it takes to want to be the person that runs into burning buildings as a career choice. I know that firemen wear all kinds of high-tech, protective gear and have a lot of training, but it doesn't change the fact that they are still running into highly dangerous situations on purpose. I have a lot of respect for firemen in general and until this morning, thought the San Francisco fire department was pretty good as well. I still have respect for them for the most part, but what I saw this morning scared me a little bit.

I live on a steeply slanted street which, understandably, makes it difficult to park all of the firetrucks and emergency vehicles needed to rescue people and put out a fire. There are also a lot of leafy trees and power lines. While I was watching some of the firemen put on lots of gear and head into the apartment building, another crew was taking down some tall ladders and trying to lean them up against the side of the apartment building. The first thing that happened was one of the ladders became entangled in some overhead power lines. The two guys holding it started yanking on it and sure enough (big surprise) they snapped a line and pulled it down. Everyone standing in the street started yelling and running away from it and the guys holding the ladder dropped it with a big crash, but nothing happened. Maybe the power had been turned off because of the fire? Or it was actually a telephone line instead of a power line? Who knows.

Eventually, the ladder dudes tried to lean it up against the side of the building again. Hooray, success. Except that due to the steep slant of the street, the ladder kept leaning towards the down side of the hill and falling over. Obviously, this ladder wasn't going to be usable or safe unless they could level it out. One of the men stood there holding up the ladder while the other bent over and started scanning the ground. I think he was looking for something to use as a shim or a wedge, but for all I know he was looking for a dropped contact lens.

While all of this is going on, about 100 people from the various apartment buildings were standing around in their pajamas with their little apartment dogs and cats trying to figure out what was going on. It looked like a few of them went off to one of the local cafes and brought back coffee and donuts for their neighbors, which probably helped them deal with the cold foggy air. I could see a few guys with cameras taking photographs - maybe they were here for the newspaper?

Suddenly, one of the ladder trucks woke up, swiveled around to face the apartment building and started extending. It was kind of like watching one of the Autobots come to life - where was Shia LeBeouf hiding? I checked on the duo trying to balance out their little ladder and noticed that even though it was still crooked, one of them was climbing up it with an axe in his hand. The odd thing was, even though I could see smoke coming out of one of the chimney stacks on the roof, there didn't seem to be any other sign of a fire. This guy's ladder didn't reach up to the roof and I couldn't imagine that he would use an axe to break open a window, so where was he going? And what kind of silly person would climb up an obviously unstable ladder? The ladder on the truck finally reached the roof and two firemen crawled up it to start hacking away at the chimney stack. Yippee, progress at last!

Things were pretty quiet and uninteresting for a while, when all of a sudden a bunch of the cops standing around suddenly started running over to the middle of the street and jumped into a dogpile. I didn't think it was a spontaneous game of street football, but nothing exciting had been happening for a while so maybe they were all bored? Eventually, I could see two police officers lead a man in handcuffs over to the curb and sit him down. After everything had calmed down and all the emergency personnel and firemen had left, I eventually learned that the man lived in the building on fire and had left his dog home while he went out for an early morning run and some breakfast. He was worried about his pet and was trying to get inside to save it. I could understand why the man shouldn't be allowed to run into a burning building, but was it really necessary for so many cops to jump him? There must have been about 10 of them in the dogpile. I appreciate the need to save people from themselves as well as make sure some psycho isn't attacking any of the firemen or EMTs, but maybe that was a little bit of overkill. Just a smidge.

After about three hours, all of the action seemed to be over. The nasty smelling dark cloud of smoke still hung in the air, trapped under the cold gray layer of fog covering the city. People in the street finally began returning to their buildings, probably to get ready for more mundane things like their day jobs. I noticed that the dynamic duo with the wonky ladder seemed to have survived their Keystone Kops routine. I wondered who had given them that particular task as it seemed to add absolutely nothing to the overall process of fighting the fire. Maybe that was the whole point - their chief gave them a (relatively) benign task to keep them out of the way. Granted, they did take down either a power or telephone line, but in general didn't seem to add anything to the list of damages caused by the fire.

It took about another hour for all of the equipment to be loaded back onto the firetrucks and for the police to get traffic flowing normally on the street again, but now everything is pretty much back to normal. A light breeze has started blowing and the fog is slowly starting to break up, so hopefully the noxious smoke will disappear soon too. The sun is starting to shine through it all and it looks like it might even be a warm summer day afterall. A utility truck has just parked itself on the corner to repair the downed wire, so I imagine there might be another minor bottleneck in traffic on the street for a while, but nothing like it was earlier. Everything is quiet again - at least as quiet as it ever is here - and I am starting to feel a bit sleepy. It is time for a catnap before anything else happens.

I live in a grown up dorm. Panty raid anyone?

I have realized in the last few months that the building I live in is completely different than I had realized. I live on a fairly busy street so there is always the sound of traffic, but the building itself always seemed pretty quiet. However, in the last three years that I have lived in it, I don't think I have ever spent that much time in it. Between a hectic schedule for work, school, friends, and family, my apartment was basically a place where I came home to sleep and sometimes veg out in on a Sunday. I live in a small building that is generally made up of working professionals who are friendly but for the most part keep to themselves. There are a few distinctive personalities that stand out - one guy seems to set his apartment on fire every six months or so while cooking bacon and another only does laundry every two months and everyone ends up with his cat's hair all over their clothes after he has hogged the machines all day. But in general, it is a pretty peaceful place.

Lately, though, I feel like I am living in a college dormatory inhabited buy thirty-something adults trying to recreate the feel of Animal House. It starts at about 6:30am - several people in the building own dogs and they all seem to slam their doors at the same time as they go out for the usual morning walk. I don't know if this is a new phenomena or if I just never noticed it before because when I was employed I was in the shower right about then, singing my fool head off and probably annoying everyone else. The dogs all run up and down the hallways, then up and down the stairs, getting scolded by their owners. I don't think Rip Van Winkle could have slept through that; I know I can't.

The dogs seem to act as some sort of alarm clock because soon enough, it seems like the whole building is awake and in the shower. I live in an older building that has central ventilation shafts. All of the bathrooms and kitchens have windows that open onto the shafts so it is possible to hear all kinds of things from other apartments. I am not the only shower-singing talent in the building, although 'talent' may be an optimistic description for any of us, including me. One woman seems to have a secret desire to be the next Maria Callas and sings what could generously called off-key operatic arias, but to me sound like one of those whistles that kids put water in to make it sound like birdsong.

Eventually, all the traditionally gainfully employed people in the building troop off to their respective desks. Hooray, now it will be nice and quiet again, right? Nope, sorry, not even close. As soon as those doors shut, all the poor little apartment dogs suffering from separation anxiety start barking, howling, and scratching at the door. If I were to take a walk on any floor in this building, I would hear at least one dog begging for their owner to come home. It is both heartbreaking and aggravating to hear these little guys. They can keep it up for hours, which can't be good for their health or my sanity. How can they just bark and howl like that for so long? One of these days, all of those little dogs will rebel, put their owners on leashes, lock them up somwhere boring with nothing to do all day and show us all who is really in charge.

Throughout the day, a variety of noisy things go on. The building manager vaccums all the public spaces, maintenence guys come and go banging mysteriously on various pipes and walls, and an unending parade of people seems to troop in and out. These people are kind of odd - who are they here to see? I mean, it seemed like everyone in the building except me left earlier to go to whatever form of employment they keep, and yet, these visitors are here. And they are noisy, too. They all seem to run up and down the stairs, giggling like drunk sorority sisters, and always, always slam the door to whatever apartment they finally go into. At first I thought maybe we had a few vacant apartments to rent and all of these people were potential new neighbors. That in itself was a little worrying, because who wants to live with perpetually drunk people who giggle like twenty-something girls?

Another outrageously loud noise that I often hear are the doorbells. For some reason, every one of the apartments in this building has its own doorbell. This is odd because it is a gated building and the only way for a visitor to gain entrance is for someone to buzz them in. So it shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that someone will soon come knocking on your door after you have buzzed them in, right? And these aren't just any old doorbells, these are full on buzzers. If you hold it long enough, it actually sounds like some sort of crazy laser wielded by one of James Bond's archenemies that is about to emasculate him. I guess my apartment used to be where the property manager lived before he moved next door and for some reason no one in the building seems to know that. I can't imagine how many people must have thought he just ignored all of them when I was at work all day because now that I am home a lot, it seems like every one of them buzzes my door to complain to him about something several times a week. They are all completely surprised to find out that not only does he not live in #17, but that I have lived in that apartment for over three years. I used to feel awful every time my adorable but mischief making nephew would have a fit of temporary insanity and run around buzzing everyone's apartments simply because he liked the noise, but now I just wish he would come back over and do it to them again. Petty, yes. Satisfying? Oh yeah.

Besides giggling like silly schoolgirls, everyone who comes and goes in the building seems to like pranking each other. I heard one guy screaming in the stairwell about a week ago and thought maybe a murder was being committed. When I stuck my head out over the stairway railing to see if I should call 911 or just ignore everything, I saw three guys about my age laughing like idiots while another guy seemed to be trying to pull the back of his underwear off his head. I guess his good buddies thought it would be funny to give him a colossal sized wedgie and as an added bonus, make him scream like a little girl. Heehee, that one actually got a laugh out of me too. Sucks to be you, buddy.

Just the other day, I came home to find some woman's panties hung on my doorknob. At first I thought that maybe one of my neighbors believe I had accidentally left them in the laundry room and was trying to return them. They were very cute, but definitely not mine. Then I looked down the hallway and realized that every door had either panties or a bra hanging from the knob. There were notes attached to them that warned the owner (she lives in #9 according to the notes) to stop putting her laundry in the dryer on her way to work and then leaving it there all day until she came home. I was a little grossed out that some woman's panties were hanging from my door, but if they had been found in the dryer, then odds were they at least were clean. I carried them down to her apartment and hung them on her door. I could see that a few other people had been there because there was a whole collection of underwear in front of her apartment. I don't know who the laundry vigilante was that decided to hang this woman's underwear all over the building, but I think it was an interesting way to make a point.

As I type this blog, the stupid fire alarm in the building is going off again, making my ears ring. The building owners had a new system installed recently and the thing is so sensitive, it will go off if you just mention the word fire. Last Saturday night one of my neighbors had a party and the alarm started going off every time one of his guests buzzed the gate. Between the drunk people smoking and drinking in the hallway, the loud music, and the psychopathic fire alarm, I really felt like I was living in good old Bean Hall at the University of Oregon. At first, everyone would pay attention and try to determine if there really was a fire and should leave the building. Now, we all try our best to ignore it - stupid and dangerous, I know. I am getting a little concerned because I have a phone interview for a job I am trying my best to get and it starts in 30 minutes. Hopefully, the building really isn't on fire and alarm will have stopped by then. I'm still in my pj's and I don't want to stand on the street in them and try to give a good interview at the same time.

For all that I have been kvetching about how noisy my building is, I still love living in it. A lot of what goes on is pretty funny and it definitely isn't boring. Even though none of my neighbors and I are what you would call best pals, we do try to be concious of each other and how sound carries throughout the building. Except for the occasional loud party on a weekend, no one is outrageously noisy at night. And if someone who is tired of you hogging the dryer hangs your underwear on everyone's door, well, just remember that you abandoned the poor things for the entire day and it has now become communal property. Just be glad it wasn't held for ransom or sold on ebay.

What is it about marriage?

Do you ever have those times in life where you get mildly paranoid and you feel targeted for one reason or another? Or those weeks when it seems like the same subject is coming up over and over? You know what I mean - it feels like suddenly everyone wants to know why you are thinking about dying your hair blue and perfect strangers are freely offering their opinions but you hadn't even told anyone yet. Or the whole world is talking about how much they love Fritos/Paula Abdul's new haircut/sending tourists to the moon. Over the last few weeks, that has been happening to me and it is making me crazy.

My subject of paranoia lately has been marriage. I live in California, the one state in this country where you would think no one would care who married who and how they went about it. And yet, somehow, marriage has restrictions here. So, understandably, a lot of people talk about it publicly and it is difficult to spend time with anyone without the subject coming up. But I have also come across the subject in a more personal way a little too often lately and I am starting to feel persecuted.

How many of us have crystal clear memories from childhood? What is the earliest thing you remember about yourself and how young were you? I have always know three very specific things about myself for as long as I can remember: my favorite color is green, I don't want to be a parent and I don't want to marry anyone. I am sure if I sat down with some sort of psychologist and discussed my childhood and my adamant self-knowledge on children and marriage, theories could be put forth on these subjects and many of them may even be true. Personally, I am not interested in WHY I know these things about myself so certainly. I am much more interested in living my life in a way that makes me happy and I have always known that either of those two states in life would not only make me miserable, it would also ruin other people's lives. I don't believe talking to anyone about why I love the color green so much is interesting or enlightening, so let's just skip that one.

So, back to the feeling of persecution. That is a very strong, almost medieval sounding word but at times it does reflect how I feel, along with mildly guilty, frustrated, and extremely happy to be so self-aware. Last week, a man who lives in my neighborhood that I always say hello to when I see him on the street asked why he hadn't seen my husband around in a while. I was in a hurry to get somewhere, but that question brought me to a screeching halt because it was so odd. I asked what he was talking about and he said he used to see me walking with my husband once in a while but lately I am always alone. It never occurred to me that maybe he was talking about a boyfriend or a friend that he had mistaken for a husband; I was totally confused. He started describing the man and I finally realized he was talking about a friend of mine who used to live in San Francisco and about ten months ago moved away. We would occasionally hang out and must have run into this guy a few times on our way to some other place. It was strange to me that he assumed that we were married to each other. I quickly explained the situation to the man, who then proceeded to tell me that while I was a nice young lady, I should get a move on and get married and start having babies soon. Wow, ok, now I am feeling a little targeted by this guy.

I am very used to well-meaning people who think they are giving me helpful advice commenting on my personal life, but this was the first time it had come from someone who was practically a stranger. Fortunately, I really did have somewhere I needed to go and I was able to just thank him for his concern and boogie on down the street, but the whole conversation was really odd. It came completely out of the blue and I wasn't sure if I should just chalk it up to another odd experience in my neighborhood or if I should actually feel a little insulted. I know he meant well and was just offering advice (unsolicited or not) based on his own beliefs about how to live a good life, but he doesn't really know me at all and where does he get off commenting on my personal life like that?

A few days later, a woman I used to be good with friends eons ago when we were both in college found me on Facebook. I have had a Facebook account for a couple of years, but I never really kept up with it. In my recently unemployed state, I decided I might as well finally fill out my profile and update things a little and suddenly, all kinds of people are contacting me on it, including this woman. I had mixed feelings about talking to her because of a conversation we had when she got married that totally offended me, but I decided that enough time had gone by and I should just forget about it and let it go. It was time to free myself of old baggage that I had completely forgotten about anyway. I replied to her and asked how she was doing. Her response was to tell me all about her husband and kids and how well they were doing, which made me very happy to know. Then she asked me if I was married and if I wasn't, then why? Did I have any kids? Why not? I think asking if I am married and/or have children are both reasonable, normal questions. Asking why I have done neither seems a little nosy to me. Especially when she offered to set me up with some nice men she knew who were ready to settle down and get married. Time to duck and cover and in the immortal words of Graham Chapman in Monty Python's Holy Grail, RUN AWAY!

Again, I find myself asking why a person I barely know anymore gets off commenting on my personal life this way. A few other similar situations have occurred recently, all following about the same line of conversation: Why aren't you married? Don't you want to have children? What do you mean you don't think marriage is necessary? Somewhere along the way, marriage has become the new conversational hot button that is guaranteed to take normally rational people and turn them into insanely opinionated and potentially offensive monsters. So, what IS it about marriage?

Intellectually, I can understand a lot of the attractions for marriage. Hopefully, two people have found each other that want to spend the rest of their lives together. Marriage is a way to show each other and the world that these two people are committed to each other in a way that can't be guaranteed by any other sort of relationship. They are emotionally and financially bound to each other which can provide a lot of trust and security. The way most benefit structures work, married couples are also more likely to be able to share health insurance and in the case of a death, property division is much easier. Ok, I respect that, but I still don't understand why it is necessary. I mean, people grow and change and so do their lives. Why go through a religious and/or legal ceremony to prove something you already know about each other? Also, I believe that often these days people marry knowing that if it doesn't work out, they can always obtain a divorce. To me, that is backwards. Then, there are the people who are not allowed to marry because of all sorts of tangled up emotions, convictions, and inside the box thinking. Because I can understand on an intellectual level why people marry in the first place, I can also understand why EVERYONE would want to marry. Except me.

Personally, I would really like to find someone to spend the rest of my life with. I want to have that connection with a person that I don't have with anyone else on the entire planet. I want that same level of trust, security, inside jokes, shared experiences, stories, triumphs, disasters, and goals. I want to know that the way I love this person is so totally unique and necessary to my life, I cannot in a million years imagine myself ever stopping. And I want someone to feel that way about me in return. What I DON'T want is to feel that in order to have all of those things, I have to marry to get them. To me, that is putting a conditional chain around something that should just be allowed to exist.

I know that I am sensitive and paranoid about this subject, especially with the current politics on the question of marriage in this country. I do feel guilty that I totally reject for myself something that is denied to other people who want it so badly simply because our country is suffering from a lapse in understanding basic human rights. And I know that I have unintentionally hurt people who cared for me because I do not want to live life their way. But I also believe that good hearted people are sometimes nosy and insensitive and that closing themselves off to non-traditional ways of life can turn them into unkind pests who talk too much.

So, I am left with my original question - do any of you ever feel like the whole world is targeting you on a particular subject you would rather ignore or is this my personal brand of craziness?

Who knew job hunting can ruin your credit?

I confess it, I am a rabid job hunter. I work for an employment agency that is diligently searching for a new position for me, but it is impossible for me to just sit around waiting for my future to be decided. I start getting all twitchy (ok, more twitchy than usual) and the free time to think too much is bad for my health. I have interviewed and registered with several other agencies in the city and I also surf all the usual job sites religiously. I have learned that I am not the biggest kook out there, which is a little disturbing when I think about it. I am a pretty odd duck. The scariest and most infuriating things I have come across are the scams. Some of these are doozies and could potentially do some real harm to an unsuspecting, well-meaning person who just needs a job or some extra cash. A friend of mine suggested I post some of them so here you go:

The Administrative Assistant Scam:

This one usually involves someone posting an advertisement for an administrative assistant with few details and a request for people to submit resumes for consideration. After a few days, you will get an email detailing one of a few different scenarios:

a) I am an executive living in an international country who sells items on the internet. I don't want to open a bank account in the U.S. because of the taxes I will have to pay, so I need a representative who can receive checks or money orders on my behalf, cash them in a personal checking account, and forward the funds to a third party through Western Union. For your trustworthiness and help you will be paid a percentage of the total amount of each check or money order up to $500 per week.

b) I am an international businessman/woman who solicits donations for various orphanages and I need representatives in the different countries to collect the checks/money orders, cash them in a personal checking account, purchase toys for the children and send them to the orphanages. To reward you for your diligence and honesty, you will be paid a flat rate of $200 per transaction not to exceed $2500 per month.

Not bad, huh? You will also be requested to send the following information:

Full Names:

Full Contact Address:

City:

State:

Zipcode:

Phone Number:

Occupation (if any):

Sex:

Marital Status:

Age:

I can't quite understand why my gender, marital status, and age can possibly be of interest to someone who is foolish enough to trust a perfect stranger with money and how either of these situations in any way constitute an administrative assistant position. Also, why can't customers just wire money directly to the seller through Western Union? People send money this way all over the world every day. Here is my take on these 'jobs' - I think it is all a scam. I think that these people are creating fake checks and money orders, sending them to unsuspecting people who just want to earn some extra cash or like me, are just looking for an honest job. These poor people cash a bad check or money order, withdraw the cash immediately (minus their fee of course), and either forward the money to the third party or buy whatever items were requested, etc. I would then imagine that a few days later the bank discovers that the check or money order was a fake and have no way to recover the funds except to take them from the person who cashed the check in the first place, which would be me or whomever else was innocent enough to get involved in this.

In an effort to find out if this was just another crazy idea from my suspicious mind or if I was on to something, I did a little research on the internet and also spoke to someone from my bank and discovered some surprising things. I learned that MoneyGram is currently dealing with an epidemic of forged money orders. The money orders look exactly like the real thing - they have all the right strings of identification numbers in all the right places, the logos are perfect, and even the security seal looks accurate. Basically, the only way for the average person to tell if a money order is real or fake is to call MoneyGram, read them the numbers on the order, and have them verify that someone actually paid cash for it.

As for the forged checks, I contacted someone in the fraud department for my bank and asked what my recourse would be if I unknowingly cashed a fake check. The bank said there wasn't a lot that could be done unless I could prove who did it. Yes, I may have an email address or a name but who is to say that isn't all fake information? The bank would do whatever was necessary to recover the funds, meaning it would take the money from me because I was the person who cashed it. If I try to prevent the bank from recovering the money or if that recovery of funds put my account into overdraft and I did not cover it, they could close my account and report me to the FBI as a suspected check forger. The bank would put me into check systems, the national credit reporting system that banks use to determine if you regularly overdraw and then abandon accounts, which would also post negatively on my credit report. So basically, I could potentially ruin my credit, lose my bank account, and be investigated by the FBI as some sort of check forging fiend. Who knew job hunting could be so dangerous to my reputation and credit?

The Secret Shopper Scam:

This scam is pretty tricky because I actually know people who really do earn extra cash as secret shoppers. Basically, a business will hire a company to send out people to their stores, restaurants, etc. to act as 'difficult' customers and test the level of customer service they receive. It is a legitimate resource for many businesses and can provide valuable feedback. The secret shopper is given money to purchase items and eat in restaurants as well as a few hundred dollars per session for the work they do. A good secret shopper can do this a few times a month and earn some nice cash, eat out, and keep a lot of what is bought. A pretty nice setup, if you ask me.

I recently came across an ad for secret shoppers and was very excited - I have always wanted to try this out because it seemed like fun. So I sent an email to the contact address listed in the job posting and then forgot about it. A few weeks later, I received an email asking if I was still interested in the secret shopper position and if so, to send my yahoo online chat name so I could have a real-time conversation with one of the managers. I willingly sent my username and a few minutes later, got a ping requesting a conversation. Boy, did this turn out to be an interesting chat! I won't mention names, I will just call this guy Bob. Bob started out by calling me "Ma". At first, I thought he had confused me with someone else and asked him if he meant to speak to me or someone else. Bob said he was trying to be respectful and since he thought the name Lisa was female, it would have been rude to call me "sir." By this, I came to understand that he meant to call me "ma'am". Ok, a little odd but friendly enough.

I won't bore everyone with a detailed replay of the entire conversation, I'll just give you the juicy bits. After the end of a slightly confusing and rambling conversation where I guess I asked too many questions, Bob told me he felt sorry for my husband because I was obviously difficult to deal with. Now, I will be the first to admit that I can be opinionated and headstrong at times and understandably, that can give even the most patient person a headache. But I really don't understand why asking questions is a bad thing, especially for an employer. When I was hiring people and then managing them, I WANTED people to ask me questions. I never wanted an employee to just wander off and waste time performing a task incorrectly because of a lack of understanding. I would rather take a little extra time and find a better way to explain what I needed done, confirm that everyone was on the same page, and then feel confident that the task(s) would be done correctly the first time. So who is this unprofessional guy commenting on my marital status and the life of my poor (non-existent) husband?

After basically ignoring his comments about my personal life and trying to direct the conversation back to the secret shopper position, I was slightly irritated to find out that it had been filled and he had no need for any more secret shoppers. By this point, I was starting to wonder if maybe Bob had a few screws loose. I asked if this online chat was an interview for employment and if not, then I said that I needed to get back to job hunting and to please have a nice day. Bob said that he had a different position available for me and that he was emailing me a document to read. I was now starting to read all sorts of alternative meanings into the word 'position' and was wondering if I was going to find some sort of adult content in my inbox that would demolish my laptop with some super-virus if I opened it.

Needless to say, I opened the email. No naked people were pictured anywhere inflagrante, no laptop eating viruses attacked my computer, no FBI came banging on my door for committing some sort of cyber crime that I don't even know about. So far, so good, until I read the content. Essentially, I was being asked to set up a home office with a computer, color laser printer, and DHL, UPS, or FedEx account and I would miraculously become their new payroll accountant who would issue paychecks to various employees around the U.S.

I know that I am a very capable person and I can do just about anything I set my mind to, but I can't even begin to imagine what sort of skills and education go into being a payroll accountant. Every accountant I know has gone to school and taken numerous additional classes in order to be employed as one. I think they might even require a license of some sort. Also, don't most companies outsource their payroll to firms who specialize in it? And don't most employees prefer to have their paychecks electronically deposited into personal accounts these days? The whole thing seemed suspect to me - I was being asked to print out payroll checks on my home printer by a guy who had no problem labeling me a fishwife.

I asked Bob to be a little more specific with the details - I wanted to be sure I completely understood what he was asking me to do. By this point, I was definitely not considering him a viable employer, it was more that I was just very curious about this whole surreal setup. Uh oh, I had asked another question. Oops, sorry Bob, I know how you hate that.

In the end, I didn't really get many more details, but I was able to confirm my opinion that Bob was running some sort of scam. Maybe he really did employ secret shoppers in a legal fashion, but the whole payroll check printing setup was definitely not kosher. When I asked him if he would send me the blank checks to print out, he said I could just purchase good quality paper at the local Kinko's and with the right software (which he would send me), I could print out the checks that way. What about watermarks? Security seals? Account numbers? All the other little gadgets that are used to create legitimate checks? No answer.

The conversation limped along a little bit longer as I tried to confirm that I truly understood what he was asking of me, then I told him I didn't think I could work for him. I explained my concerns about the legitimacy of what I would be doing on his behalf and told him a little about some of the scams I had come across in my search for employment. Bob took the opportunity to lecture me on how overly suspicious I was and how that was unhealthy for my aura and my emotional life. He felt that if I would let go of all my negative concerns and just go with the opportunity he was presenting to me, I would be a much happier person. I thanked him for his (unsolicited) advice and mentioned that there was always the possibility he was correct about me, a perfect stranger, but that I was more concerned about becoming a much poorer person behind bars. There wasn't really anything left to discuss so I wished him a good day ( I didn't think wishing him luck was a good idea) and blocked him from my chat list.

After thinking about it for a while, I have to wonder if perhaps Bob was running something that was actually part of a bigger, more complex scam. If I printed out those checks, would they actually be sent to someone who was being scammed in the Administrative Assistant scam I outlined earlier? That would mean that something I did actually hurt another person, a stranger just trying to make a little money.

I have come across a few other suspicious things in my search for a job, but those two are the most potentially harmful ones I have seen. In a way, they have helped me put this whole job search thing into a different perspective - yes, I must have a job, but no, I will not do something I am even remotely suspicious about just to get off unemployment. Living on the dole for a few months, no matter how much it puts my life into total limbo, is infinitely better than going down a darker path that can have serious repercussions for strangers who might not be as suspicious minded as I am. I do not see myself as better than anyone else, but I try very hard not to be worse, either.

Happy July 4....celebrate at will!

Today is July 4, 2009. This morning when I woke up, I wallowed in bed for a while trying to decide how I felt about that. I spent some time attempting to determine what this major national holiday means to me. I mean, by rights and history, it should be THE national holiday for this country, bigger than Christmas. Is that even possible? Christmas seems to start earlier every year, before Halloween sometimes, and lasts at least until the new year begins. July 4 is just, well, July 4.

I know my basic history for July 4 and the Declaration of Independence, as do most people who live in the U.S. Intellectually, I understand the importance of it and the fantastically big set of cojones that a small group of priveleged thinkers must have had to think that not only could they publish such a defiant document taking on one of the biggest superpowers of their day, but that they could convice the average Joes living among them to support it and die for it. It has become the basis for the idea of what constitutes the "American Way" - bearding tyranny in its den, suceeding against all odds, bringing home the gold medal, and we all live happily every after in patriotic splendor.

So if I understand it and appreciate the true significance of what it meant at the time and how it has informed and created the nation I live in today, why do I feel so blah about this holiday? Am I unpatriotic? Do I not love my country? Well what does it mean to be patriotic? I can say unequivocally that if we are allowing Bush Jr. to define patriotism, then I am most definitely NOT a patriot. Dictionary.com has three definitions for the word patriot:

pa⋅tri⋅ot

  [pey-tree-uht, -ot or, especially Brit., pa-tree-uht] Show IPA

–noun

1.	a person who loves, supports, and defends his or her country and its interests with devotion.

2.	a person who regards himself or herself as a defender, esp. of individual rights, against presumed interference by the federal government.

3.	(initial capital letter) Military. a U.S. Army antiaircraft missile with a range of 37 mi. (60 km) and a 200-lb. (90 kg) warhead, launched from a tracked vehicle with radar and computer guidance and fire control.

I do love my country and support the ideals it was founded on but I don't consider myself devoted - that word just rings hollow to my ear. I do believe that people need to be wary of interference by our federal government but I also don't see myself as some sort of Xena Warrior Princess fighting off evil politicians. The last time I checked, I was not any sort of military antiaircraft missile. So, am I a patriot and if so, why am I not out waving a flag and singing the national anthem on the street corner? Does anyone else wonder about these things or is this a solo form of dementia?

Eventually (obviously), I did get myself out of bed after having a fairly long, rambling, internal debate with myself. The gist of it is that I spent a lot of time thinking about how I have celebrated July 4 throughout my life and what the day has meant to me. As a child, it was often a time when my family would get together for a picnic or a barbecue and celebrate various birthdays that landed near the holiday. At that time, it was still possible for families to buy and set off any number of fireworks and the potential danger of it was always thrilling to me. I loved the sulpher smell and when I closed my eyes, I could still see the brightly colored flashes of lights behind my eyelids. If we were at the beach that year, my family including my parents, sisters, aunt, uncle, cousins, and grandparents would pack up half of the house and drive down the coast to a little town that put on a huge display of fireworks. We would all drink hot chocolate and occaisionally my uncle would allow me to have a sip of his with the drop amoretto in it. Yum. It was all very fun, but I never remember thinking about what it meant, about why we were celebrating that holiday on that date, why that holiday is so important to the people who live in this country. I think children can be forgiven for just enjoying the moment during their long break from school; it is part of the joy of summer.

As young adult, July 4 celebrations did change a bit. For the most part, I did still spend them with some part of my family, but the large gatherings of relatives pretty much stopped when all the kids grew up and flew the coop. Most often, I would meet with friends for some sort of barbecue and drunken beerfest, then we would all head down to the river to meet up with my sister and watch the fireworks. Some years I would go home to the little town I grew up in and along with everyone else, head over to the tiny highschool to watch the volunteer fire department set off the fireworks on the baseball diamond. If I sat up in the bleachers, I could often see the fireworks displays from some of the other small towns around the area. If we were lucky, it would be a nice, balmy evening and the sky would be a perfect velvety black backdrop. I do not ever remember thinking about what July 4 means and why we were all there celebrating it by shooting off mini-missiles while the community band played Sousa marches.

Nowadays, I live in a city that is known for foggy summers. This last week was a rare, beautifully clear, warm week but of course today it is overcast and the weatherman with his crystal ball is forcasting fog this evening. I will spend the day with my family, enjoying playing with my nieces and nephew, eating good food, and gossiping about the same old things we as always do. This is how it always goes when my family gets together, whether it is a Saturday night or a major holiday. I know that even though we will wish each other a happy July 4, none of us will really discuss what any of that means. We won't tell the story of what happened so long ago on that original July 4 or what has happened throughout our country's history since then. While the city will shoot off fireworks, we won't be able to see them under the heavy bank of fog. Rather, the day will be nice and lazy and we will all be happy this evening when we finally wander home to our beds.

So, at the end of this long internal conversation, I came back to my original question - am I a patriot and do I give the July 4 holiday the respect it deserves? I think I am and I do. Why did thirteen colonies originally go against their ruling superpower? To have the right of self-determination and equality. Yes, there were all sorts of other political and economic issues, but basically that is the gist of the Declaration of Independence. I think part of the legacy of that document is that while we need government to manage things and represent us on local and international levels and while we need laws to protect us from the idiocy humans are capable of, we are all encouraged and expected to live our own lives in our own fashion. This should be applied to everything from what political parties we identify with and who we vote for and how we treat our neighbors all the way down to how we spend our free time and which holidays we choose to celebrate and how we go about that. I will never be a flag waving person shouting out the glory of my country, but I do believe in the essential ideals that began this great experiment and in my own way I celebrate that by gathering with my family, reconnecting with friends, and enjoying a day that has been set aside specifically to remind us where we come from.