I've been had!

Those sly rascals at Dunkin Donuts just up-sold me! For those of you not familiar with the shame and disillusionment associated with Excessive Buzzword Exposure, "up sell" is markety-speak for making me buy more than I was initially going to.

There's a big sign up by the register offering any number of wonderful treats — five munchkins, a raspberry danish, those toasted home fry things — for "just 99 cents" with any drink purchase.

"What a DEAL!" I exclaimed to myself. And I promptly added three chocolate and two cinnamon munchkins to my medium coffee. I had been prepared to buy 2-3 munchkins, because I wanted a little sugar rush — it's a big day here after all (I shouldn't even be writing this, but I'm about to crack, so give a fella a break, huh?) — which only cost 25 cents each. And yet the idea of five for a buck! So enticing! They got me to spend an extra 50 cents... and like it. I walked out feeling like they did me a favor!

Now that's good markety.

Wait, it's the All-Star Break Already?

So, like, we're in the middle of summer? When did that happen? What was this, the fifth nice day we've had since April? I'm way behind on my summer fun!

Anyway — let me just say that I love our president. And it feels great to say that.



Also, the Red Sox (and my fantasy team, for that matter) are somehow in first place as of the midsummer classic. It feels great to say that too!

There Goes My Identity

Well, it finally happened — I woke up this morning with over a hundred dollars charged to my bank account from a random grocery store in Brooklyn, N.Y. That's just swell!

The amazing thing is I had a voicemail from Bank of America waiting to tell me about all this. They froze my account and everything before I even know it happened, and will reimburse me for the fraudulent charge. Good on them!

I'm thinking this is direct a result of running our Saturday night bar tab at J.J. Foley's on my debit card instead of a credit card (see where responsible money-management gets you?). Not that the bartenders would have done anything with the card, but at the end of the night I left the paid check in the leather billfold thing right on the bar, and the place was SLAM-crowded. We could barely squeeze ourselves to the exit. Who knows who could've yanked the receipt out of there, and sometimes (way too often, really) those credit card slips have all your card info on them, even the expiration date.

Gina's aunt and uncle actually ran into trouble with this years ago, where their bank info was stolen from a debit card receipt at a restaurant, and they lost like over a thousand bucks — of real money too, not credit card charges you can dispute. It turned out the waiters were selling receipts on the side for like $20 a pop. Since then they opened up a "going out" credit card with a maximum credit line of $400, so they can still use a card at restaurants, but if it's stolen the thief won't be able to tap their life's savings. Ingenious, no?

P.S. The guy in the photo is not an identity thief — well, as far as I know anyway! (Ha, poor guy. Sorry, dude, if you find this!) But his name is John Gorey, which means he may already be inadvertently stealing my web traffic, if not my persona.