Target Shopper?

 

Wesley Chapel, Florida (high 85, low 64)

 

I’ve been watching the weather reports around the country and feel for those folks who are dealing with all the heavy rain,  snow and ice.  I haven’t heard of any tornados overnight, so hopefully the predicted severe tornado outbreak didn’t happen.    They are expecting heavy rain at our lot in Georgia.  I hope the cabin and hot tub  don’t float away.  I’m glad we’re not up there.

After the beautiful kayaking trip on Thursday, things here have gone down hill.   We had hoped to get in another kayaking trip before Christmas, but that’s not looking promising.   Too much to do before Christmas, and we haven’t finished our Christmas shopping.  It’s just too hard to buy for my Mother and brother.

On Friday, despite the terrible traffic, but Al wanted to drive over to Clearwater to Don’s Marine Salvage, to pick up a ladder for our boat.  He called the guy and was assured they had what he was looking for.   We could have ordered it online, which would have been easier, but we needed to see the ladder in person to make sure it would work.  So after getting stranded on the Howard Franklin Bridge due to a traffic accident, we finally got there after probably a 2 hour drive.

I borrowed the following picture from the internet, but you can see what we were dealing with.  This is exactly how bad the traffic was.   Oh well, at least it was a pretty day to be stuck on a bridge.

 

When we got to the marine salvage place, we discovered the ladder we went for was not the correct one.   It figures. 

Before we went to Clearwater, we went to the gym then decided to stop by our local Bank of America to discuss the hacking of debit and credit cards in Target stores.  If any of you have been living in outer space and haven’t heard of the issue here it is.  Debit and credit cards used at Target stores from Black Friday through mid December  could have been hacked.   It seems the information from some 40 million cards was stolen, including the account number, pin and three digit number on the back.  That information could allow them to shop online pretty much anywhere.

Since, we had used our debit cards in Target during the time the hacking occurred,  we were a little concerned.  

Everything I heard about it just told you to monitor your accounts for any suspicious activity.   Of course, they also said if your information was stolen, that it could be months or years before the information was used.   I wasn’t comfortable having a possible ticking time bomb out there, and my gut feeling was telling me to cancel our debit cards and get new ones.  I never saw anything written or mentioned on TV about canceling the cards, but it seemed to me to be the smartest option not to wait for something to happen but to be proactive and then not have to worry about
“suspicious activity.”

We needed cash anyway, so we decided to drop by the bank and ask them what they thought.  There was a man there to check us in and the first thing he said was, “ I bet I can guess why you’re here.”   We asked about canceling our cards and he confirmed that is the safest thing to do.  We had to wait about 20 minutes for an available person to help us, but it was pretty quick after that.  She cut up our old cards, and gave us temporary cards until our new ones arrived in the mail.  It was easy, and now we feel much better.