So while we were working on my sleeve on Friday, a family came in to get their young daughter tattooed. The shop doesn’t take walk-ins so they were sent away. They were also informed that you can’t tattoo minors in Tennessee even with parental consent, but they could drive to Kentucky and do it there. They wanted to get the little girl a cross. She looked, I don’t know, 12ish? My artist said she won’t tattoo minors even with consent. It’s too early to dedicate to something for life.
So I didn’t give it much thought until I just saw a girl with a Volkswagen Beetle tattooed on her arm. It was very cute. And 1,000% what I would have gotten tattooed when I was younger. Even when I was old enough. One of my dorm rooms was decorated in Beetle ads. I have a very well done painting of a Beetle. I drove a 2001 Beetle for a while.
Growing up I was just obsessed with Volkswagen Beetles and Vans. They’re just so adorable. I loved the aesthetic. Then, the very YEAR I turned 16 (woot 1998), they came out with the “New” Beetle. If that isn’t a sign I don’t know what is. So my obsession deepened. I even have internet user names with Beetle in them.
But Mrs C, you’re not a Beetle person. I’M NOT! But I WAS and I would have totally chose that as a tattoo. And then regretted it. Why? Well, I finally got to drive one.
I drove a used 2001 Dark Blue Beetle for a few years. It was adorable as I always wished it would be. It was a hatchback which was a crazy wonderful new obsession. Every car should be a hatchback. And yall, the headroom in that thing was amazing. It was a very comfortable car. And it had a little flower vase built in and I had a fun fake flower in there all the time. It was awesome… peripherally.
See, I had given my sister my old 1994 Civic when I got the Beetle. I had to eventually take the 1994 Civic back. Why? Because Volkswagen Beetles are pieces of fucking shit. They have infinite problems. Maybe if you buy it new and only drive it 3 years, you’d be fine. But mine was not new. It had issues. Once the fusebox melted. They couldn’t replace it either. Why? Because everyone’s fuse boxes melted so they were on order. SHOULDN’T THAT BE A RECALL?
To change the battery, you had to remove the headlight. God help me, putting a new bulb in my back drivers side light was a contortionists nightmare. They are not made to be a car anyone can work on. The only people that can work on them are the Volkswagen Dealership. $$$$$ I had so many problems with that car. SO. MANY. PROBLEMS.
So many, in fact, that I had to get rid of it and go back to my 1994 Civic. A car that was 10 years OLDER. And That just ruined them for me.
Never meet your heroes.
So yeah. I would have gotten that exact tattoo and I would have loved it. And now, I’d cuss about Volkswagens being a fucking piece of shit every time I look at it. Good thing I waited till I was 40 for tattoos.
I’ve been saving this meme for like two weeks. Remember the Allstate Mayhem commercials? Do they still make those? Those were the best. Let me do some research.
*30 minutes later* — Fuck, I went to post this meme on Facebook and now I’m doing THAT. Wait a second…
“Allstate developed the campaign “Mayhem” and the character (Mayhem) in response to being ranked fourth in advertising spending behind GEICO, State Farm, and Progressive.” “Nina Abnee, executive vice president at Burnett [the advertising agency], said “We wanted to kick Flo’s ass.” “
Dang, this campaign launched in 2010! Wow. I do love Mayhem though, he’s hilarious. If you haven’t seen the commercials I’m talking about, you have the hit up youtube. Here’s one of the most memorable ones to me:
“I’m a teenage girl. My BFF Becky texted and said shes kissed Johnny. Well, that’s a problem ’cause I like Johnny. Now, I’m emotionally compromised, whoopsies *hits car in parking lot*, I’m all OMG. Becky’s not even hot!”
Dean Winters is hilarious. He just plays it deadpan. He’s always in the suit and tie. In one commercial he was a cat knocking shit off counters and laying on a bookshelf.
According to Wikipedia, he was based off of Mr White from Reservoir Dogs. They mention a run of commercials in 2018. I can’t see anything about them being out of production. Looks like he was in a commercial in 2022 and an Allstate spokeswoman said. “There’s still lots of Mayhem in the world, so he could pop in when you least expect it.” I bet he’s crazy expensive now since his career has really blown up in the last decade.
Here’s my update on that previous review with photo:
We’ve discussed mosquitoes love for the sweet sweet vintage of my blood. Well, last night, a mosquito in my house got me FOUR TIMES on the shoulder. When I saw the welts in the mirror, I decided to give this thing another try. It’s not my face this time. So I ran up to my husband and got him to use it on the four bites on my back.
I have attached the resulting picture. My husband was laughing uncontrollably. This thing is a professional grade hickey maker. That’s it. Now, maybe hickeys are the cure to mosquito bites and these people are the first ones to figure that out. I suppose this is a more sterile way to create a hickey so there is that. So you get 2 stars.
I’m gonna be honest. Those four bites DON’T itch anymore. My husband swore the itch would come back when they recovered from the trauma, but they’re still not itchy. I’m not going to say they’re fine because now they’re purple, but it is what it is.
I may sound silly, but it’s a scientific fact: “Sucking is sufficient to burst small superficial blood vessels under the skin.” What does this product do? “Suction Tool” is in the TITLE. We’re all idiots.
I’m not gonna lie though. As long as it’s covered by clothes, I’ll use this thing. With full acknowledgment of the hickey that will result. I pray I never have to explain why I have a cluster of perfectly round hickeys to a medical professional. Right now it’s looks like a giant chicken stood on my back. Chickens are descended from dinosaurs so I’m going with Raptor attack.
So the pool cover was put on yesterday. This perfectly coincided with my first tattoo appointment of the off season. I have three appointments booked right now. Yesterday, November, and December. Yesterday we designed the top and got it stenciled, traced, and started. We hope to be able to finish the coloring in in the next two long sessions. I made a deal with my husband that I wouldn’t schedule any new appointments in exchange for letting me build the deck this summer. When I restore my savings from the deck cost, I can schedule more appointments to finish the tattoo. It will have more to beef up the back of my arm and go on down my forearm as well. It’s a great motivation to spend less!
We started texting back and forth Friday night about the design. I know this is how every tattoo artist does it. You schedule your appointment a year in advance but they don’t sketch it until the night before which is insanely stressful. She sent me this:
I had notes. Why re the berries so big? They’re as big as Jack’s eyes! Bigger, actually! I looked down at my arm and his eyes are pretty big. But she said that if we went any smaller they wouldn’t read as berries. Also a red rose? *wretching noises* Can you get more stereotypical tattoo? In her defense, I get where she got it though. The berries were from my wedding bouquet as are some of the flowers that will make an appearance below the elbow. My bouquet had red and orange roses in it. Red roses are romantic. That is the only sense that I like them in – pure love. When my husband gives me red roses, it’s romantic. That’s the only time I should ever see red roses (my favorite roses are actually the orange ones with a pink border).
So she decides to just redo the front completely. She nailed the back though. Look at those swirly vines!
I’m also real worried about that pumpkin lid there (Jack O Lantern lid). Even after I went and sacrificed one of my porch pumpkins to show her want I meant by Jack O Lantern Lid.
But I’m gonna have to trust her on that. She told me to trust her so fine. She’s got an art degree and way too many years of tattooing under her belt. Still, now we’re in the evening before my tattoo and don’t have a front! So she’s like well what flowers DO you like? Fuck. So I’m frantically googling “Fall flowers” over here and sending her pictures and names.
Well, the red poppies are from momma. She loved red poppies. She had already loved them, but then we went to Italy and she saw the fields of wild poppies in person. It was a memory and a connection and I loved to paint her poppies or give her poppies. Once, I even pulled over on the side of the road and picked a huge handfuls of wild poppies for her. The city had seeded them in the median as an alternative to mowing grass.
So red poppies. Who doesn’t love a fucking dahlia? K and I have even discussed getting matching dahlia tattoos in different colors. Fucking beautiful flowers. Oh and I love those yellow pompoms. Craspedia. AKA “Drumstick” or “Billy Button” flowers. I love when there’s like 3 tall ones in a mixed arrangement. I have some on my counter right now! So I’m just throwing flowers at her. Here’s some cosmos (I was actually thinking of reddish brown “chocolate cosmos”). However, cosmos come in a variety of colors so I was like hey, if you want to add colors, here. I mean the tattoo is looking very brown as it stands.
Then I waited anxiously. Very anxiously. Had I made her mad? WHAT’S HAPPENING?
Then she sends this:
First, note all the watermarks. Dude, I’ve paid you a ton of money. I have an appointment in like 15 hours. I’m not gonna steal your work. BUT
I kinda love it. Would I have EVER said put blue flowers in it? Fuck no. But I like them. It’s a very nice pop of color and contrast. And look at momma’s poppies and my yellow pompoms! She does have a good eye for color. We had a little more back and forth about the pumpkin lid. She smoothed it out a lot. But I’m just gonna have to trust.
I’m the one who wanted a Jack O Lantern lid. One, I’m not a super big flower person. Well, I mean I actually love flowers. Momma was an AVID gardener and we went to the botanical gardens almost weekly growing up. But like – pumpkins. I’m a pumpkin person. And I LOVE the 2 pumpkins she did. But they’re not hugely prominent. They’re kinda small. Like I need more pumpkin. So I thought — Jack O Lantern. I fucking love Halloween and Fall and carving pumpkins. But how can we put a Jack O Lantern in this gorgeous very artistic tattoo without it look cheesy? Then it hit me — Jack O Lantern LID. A nod to Jack O Lanterns. I AM A GENIUS. Anyway, we’ll see how she executes it. She reminds me that these pictures are just references. OK.
Saturday morning I wake up bright and early so I can eat before I head out. She’s two hours away and it’ll be past dinner time before I get home. Here’s the Saturday morning “before” shot. Note: I’ve bought two strapless bras for the healing process. We’re going hard with three months back to back, so it’ll need 3 months of no bra strap.
I watched “6 Underground” on Netflix while she worked. It was a good movie. I love Ryan Reynolds. While she was making the stencils she said we’d have to trace them out this time. Now, I did hate being a coloring book last time she did that. However, I had already decided I’d let her choose how to do it since these appointments are so close together. She was piecing together MULTIPLE stencils to follow my body contours. Plus doing some hand drawing where they connect. So she said this is just too much to do multiple times. Yeah, OK. So first she tattooed the stencils on:
Originally, there wasn’t supposed to be so much on my chest. Of course she disagreed and that this was always the case. I have photo evidence that it was not, but I aint picking fights with my artist. I actually like it. I despise that sleeves usually cut off at the shoulder where I call “the Barbie seam”. Like, if you have a cybernetic arm or a prosthetic, that shits gonna include your shoulder joint. So should your sleeve. So after studying the stencil for a long time… fuck it, let’s do it.
The outlining took ages. So we didn’t get as much coloring in done as I expected. Jack got his catholic halo (not that that’s the intention LOL — I just wanted a frame around him so he would really POP). It is solid green, but in the photos it looks very mottled. She was REALLY packing in the color (as she should), and my skin was angry. She commented on how pissed my skin was and that if it heals patchy, we might have to go over it again. I’m not worried. She also colored two more leaves and she did two of the blue cosmos. I kinda love these cosmos! She wants to go back and do more detail on the frame around Jack, but I’m not positive I want it.
So for reference, here it is this morning from front and back so you can see where it falls on my body:
The bats have not been abandoned, but they will not be stenciled. They will be hand placed. Also probably more on my back now and at least one that peeps up on my neck.
I’m THRILLED with where this is going. I’m in love with it. I got a little anxious when I showed husband. There was a lot of miscommunication about me have THREE appointments already scheduled (BEFORE the deck was ever started). Also that it would go further down my arm (was always the intention. In fact, it was originally suppose to wrap around my arm too). And I think the bats on the neck scares him. But like, they make amazing tattoo makeup now. The only time I’d ever need t cover it up would be like court or an interview. Hell, I can pop a zit cover over a small bat. It’s fine. His words were “It’s a lot.”
So that brought me down. But I get it. It IS a lot. Especially when 2 years ago I didn’t have any tattoos. Now I’m like, INK ME. But yall know me, I like to do it right. And to me, asymmetry is gorgeous in tattoos. And I love sleeves. I don’t like the patchwork look of tattoos placed wherever there is space (though, some people love that and I do think those sticker sleeves are adorable. Lets all just be happy with our ink).
I even took this picture to show Devon (though I did not). It’s all the work tank tops I bought this year:
Listen, I still kinda hate my big fat arms. BUT after that surgery, they don’t jiggle and sag so much. And I could have NEVER done something like this before. And I have LOVED this tattoo for almost a year now (yes, his face is a year healed in these pictures). I haven’t regretted it for one second. It took a part of me I hated and made it something I wanna show off. I keep telling people, I’m drawing your attention away from my bald spots to my cleavage and tattoos.
And I don’t like people, but damn I love all the comments people make about it. Do I want to see photos of your cat? I like cats. “Did you see her bad ass tattoo?” Heh. This is art. ON ME. On my ugly body. This and the tummy tuck and boobs were like the best decisions ever.
If I was willing to wear a wig and do my makeup, this would BY FAR be my hottest era.
I have an office now! I’m very excited about it. Back when I worked from home at my last job, I bought a desk on Facebook Marketplace. I just shoved it up against the window in the guest room and turned the bed sideways to make it work. It worked but I did not like it. It was nice that Jack slept on the bed behind me though. But I hated the bed looking terrible being sideways and the desk shoved up against the curtains that I had hung and even installed pretty adorable globes in.
Most people at my current job work from home. You have to come in at least one day a week. If you want to keep your desk, you have to come in three days a week. I haven’t had a ton of work to do, so I haven’t wanted to work from home. But now that I have a steady stream of work, I filed the paperwork. I still want to keep my cube space at work, so I’ll be working Mondays and Tuesday from home. I did last week, but only half days as I had in-person meetings both mornings. So tomorrow is like my first day from home!
Check out my office:
This room was always the “game room.” When we moved in, we put those old three shelves in here and all of our games and books. When we got a king sized bed, we put our old bed in here and made mom’s room mom’s room and this room the guest room. Well, we don’t need two guest rooms, so I asked husband if I could make it my office. He said I could! So K&K came over and we moved beds!
I don’t have to have my desk scrunched against the window now. I added some short shelves and bam! I bought that stuff organizer you see on top of the shelf by the window. I gathered all the miscellaneous electronics and bits all over the house and gave them a home. All the wires, battery backups, chargers, ipods, earbuds, adapters, wireless speakers, camera zoomy things, old tablets, USB drives, chromecast, Sphero — organized. You wanna see something extremely satisfying? Check this out:
Isn’t it beautiful? I just want to stare at it. Look at that organization. It pleases me greatly. It’s smaller than a book. But holds all my cables. Why do I have 5 short USB type B cables? No idea. I’ve got USB extenders, Audio extenders, USB C wires, plug adapters, various other adapters. A whole junk drawer of wires in perfect alignment. Yes. Praise Jesus. Look, here’s the Amazon link. For $10 it is SEVERELY underselling its usefulness. They’re selling it for travel. No; sell if for junk drawers. Those are your people.
That shelf also has all my boxes of cards and some miscellaneous bins I got from cleaning out moms rooms. It’s an organization shelf. Giving homes to shit that didn’t have homes before. ORGANIZATION.
As I said, this has always been the “Game Room.” We call it that because it’s where we hoard our board game collection. With my addition of a few more shelves, I was able to get all the books and other junk off of these shelves (except for my craft bag of junk there on the left). So that gave me room to spread the games out and actually showcase some. Like the out-of-print Formula De that I ordered husband from a chick in England. I like how on the top left, I stood up Cat Lady and Leaving Earth (with a rocket ship). I told husband that’s me and him. Those puzzles on the bottom were mommas. The doors one hasn’t even been done. It was her last Christmas present.
So these shelves are where it kinda becomes MY office. First, let’s get the inflation comment out of the way. That shelf in the middle? Same shelf from the same store. Cost more than the others but shrunk in depth and height. Yep.
I had to move all the miscellaneous books over here and I thought it would look like shit. Especially because I also gathered up the sprinkling of books we had all over the house (Husband is a reader). I think I did really good though! And now I have a place for my favorite tchotchkes! I’ve always been a fan of making my work desk homey and comfortable. But now that I have MY OWN OFFICE, I could bring some home. Obviously, most of them stayed at work (Like my voodoo Dammit Doll). But I brought home my favorites that are more valuable that I’d be heart broken if someone stole them. Like the Good Omens Pops you can spy by my monitors in an earlier picture. Here we also have a Star Trek homage with a RARE tribble. That’s right, that red headed bastard was only available as a loot crate exclusive. And my Mini Masters Jayne Cobb figurine! He was a gift. Oh and my goomba on top of the Witcher books. Also this is the only place Grogu (Baby Yoda) has ever made sense. He’s a damn good quality toy. The sculpting is top notch. I just never had a place for him. He looks great here!
There’s a magnetic dry erase board on the wall with a few notes from momma. Oh and those are battery operated candles. There’s one lit in that blue Moroccan lantern. I have a plan for the wall too. I have my Amazon wish list stocked with some hexagon shelves and some gemstone jars.
I love me some pretty rocks. This is a cool way to have all the gemstones but affordably and orderly and labeled!
Don’t those look gorgeous? 49 different gemstone types in adorable little 2 inch apothecary jars with cork tops! Don’t you think they’d look so great lined up in some little white beehive hexagon shelves? I do hope someone will get them for me for my birthday or Christmas. I’m a little worried no one will gift me the GORGEOUS gemstones because they’re advertised and sold as witchcraft supplies. I’m not a witch, I just really like rocks, OK? Also if White Howlite really does tell negative energy to “fuck off” like the lady at the tattoo expo told me, how is that bad?
You know how sometimes you forget to reply to a friends text. Then a few days pass. Then it has been way too long so it would be awkward to reply now? HI! Here’s my awkward reply!
I’ve never had the intention of stopping my blog. I have just been… lazy. Like tired. After work, I want to come home and watch youtube videos mindlessly. I have lots of great ideas for posts, but I can’t write them from work and I just want to rest in the evening. So I haven’t been. Perhaps that can change with me working from home on Mondays and Tuesdays.
There was even an update on the crazy motorcycle debacle. Remember they had caught the driver? Well, he had a fuck ton of warrants. INCLUDING MURDER IN THE SECOND DEGREE. So high quality people here. They let him out on bond.
YES THEY DID.
He was arrested in Kentucky. They don’t give a fuck about the Tennessee warrants. So they let him out on bond. Because someone of that caliber will certainly honor their court date. Obviously. Yeah. I’m told that some police departments just don’t want to deal with them so they just let them out and hope they get out of their hair.
No wonder people do this. They’re just robbing everyone and making a killing with $10k a pop dirt bikes and Uhaul vans!
I was honestly so upset when this happened that I couldn’t post about it. SECOND DEGREE MURDER. Caught with a stolen Uhaul van, a stolen dirt bike, and trying to use more stolen credit cards to buy more dirt bikes. Eh, let him out. Not our problem.
Yall get a snack. It’s story time. This all started on Wednesday while I was at work. I got this alert on my phone:
So someone was trying to use my credit card to spend $9,000.00. Well, I caught the alert in time to cancel the transaction (notice it says if I/they try again, it will approve).
Welp. I’m nosy and into drama and like the “tea” as K2 would say. So I look up where my card is being used. I call up Battle Creek Powersports. I ask if anyone is there who just had a card declined for that amount. Yep. Are they still there? Yep. Well, that’s not their credit card. Que calling of the cops.
NOTE: Over the last few days, I’ve collected more info so I will be filling in some events that happened that I only just found out about today. So if you didn’t hear this in the original story, that’s why.
So the manager put the phone down on the desk to call the cops. I can still hear everything in the background. So after my card was declined, he used another. He was reading the numbers out to the cashier because their internet was down. She was using her cellphone to run the transaction. So she never saw the cards to find this suspicious. Also, apparently they were in his cellphone wallet, so wouldn’t have looked suspicious anyway. That card went through. So he loaded up his new dirt bike in a Uhaul van. The only reason he was still there, was that he was pushing his luck. He and his accomplice were discussing the purchase of another bike. However, now the store was up to their conniving. They were distracting them until the police could get there. But the guys got suspicious and fled with their new stolen bike.
I heard all this going on through the phone. She came back and I was like — did they just steal a bike from you? Yep. But they had someone hop on a bike and chase after them and we were hopeful that between that and the police already in route, this would be caught and dealt with. How exciting — I just triggered a police chase! What an interesting day at work! Yeah, they didn’t catch them.
The manger has been super nice to deal with. She’s just so thankful that I called them. Apparently, it would be a few days before they would ever find out it was fraud. By then everything would be long gone and no one gets arrested. Also, dirt bikes don’t require registration. So it’s a nifty high price item to steal. I asked her why they wouldn’t be suspicious of someone chunking a whole ass motorcycle on a credit card. She said that people do it to get the credit card benefits or miles and then pay it off. That’s fair. She sent me his license to see if I recognized it, I do not:
I get a call from the cops the next day. They did not catch the thieves. He was excited that I had a 256 area code though because the guy used a Huntsville address. Did I recognize it? Yeah. That’s MY address. He said this happens in nice neighborhoods all the time. People steal cards out of the mailboxes. Well, I don’t live in a neighborho… Oh damn, we do look rich as fuck by our house though. I was just shocked that they knew my card could AFFORD a motorcycle. I looked through my records and there were no “test” charges. How did they know my address and info and that I had such a high limit?
I have since talked to the bank and a new card was not mailed out. So they got my info some other way. Not a simple mailbox thief. And of course the license and everything is fake so they have no leads.
Then Friday I get this:
So they got caught doing the scam again at Polaris. Well, the driver got caught. Mr “Nolan Adams” fled on foot. I thought that was the end. What a wild thing to happen. Police chases and fraud and I’m all up in it! Then today, I get a letter in the mail for Mr Nolan Adams congratulating him on his new Kawasaki purchase. It includes the model and stuff so I google it. Looks like he got one of these:
Nice ride, bro. Another $10k bike. So I texted the manager and she called me. We’re both kinda not involved anymore but highly invested in this motherfucker getting caught. She fills in a lot of gaps. And sends me this news article and picture of the guy from the Polaris dealership — same guy as the license picture.
So are these guys just going around with a bunch of spoofed credit cards buying dirt bikes? It would seem so. They don’t even think it’s a real Uhaul van. She said that as soon as I called her and informed them of the scam, they informed all the other dealerships. One of them, Chase Motorsports, had actually turned the guys away because he was suspicious and told them they couldn’t buy it on a credit card.
So Polaris had heard about these guys through the grape vine of dealerships and called the cops. Who then arrested the driver, but Mr Adams ran. And get this, there was a brand new Yamaha in the van. Yamaha didn’t even know they got scammed. I doubt Kawasaki knows either.
So the manager tells me that this week she got a call from the guy whose credit card did work at their business freaking out about the transaction. He lives only like 40 minutes from me. And the dealership is an hour and half from here. And the driver is about 40 minutes away. So it seems a bit local to me… She’s going to give the other guy my info and see if we can compare notes to see if we’ve used our cards at the same place at some point. Tomorrow I’m going to call the police and offer to send them my shiny new Kawasaki owner info. I guess I’m going to start getting a lot of dirt bike mail now…
So we know this jackass has fraudulently purchased, at minimum, three shiny new dirt bikes. We’re going to keep each other in the loop and try to do some tracking for the police. Apparently, if I hadn’t have called them on a whim — none of this would have come to light until THIS week when the other guy called to see what the hell he was charged for! Even then, they wouldn’t have been able to track all the purchases back to the same guys and Polaris wouldn’t have stopped them either. Because no one would have know there was anyone doing this — they’d have all been isolated incidents. We can only tie Battlecreek, Chase Motorsports, and Polaris because of my call. Yamaha was just in the van when they were arrested, and I’m holding the Kawasaki info.
What the fuck? Credit card companies have no incentive to fix this. They only care about protecting themselves and then card holders. Not catching thieves. So this manager I called, has to pay back the money to Visa for the fraudulent charge. They just have to eat it. Visa doesn’t care.
I care though. Can’t wait to talk to my fellow stolen card brother! Does he use the same gas stations? Or eat at Another Broken Egg a lot? I wonder if there is somewhere we can pinpoint where we both used our cards…
My credit card information was recently stolen. That’s gonna be its own post because it was fucking amazing. So new credit card. This coincided with a new debit card as well. Both have NFC (near field communication) technology. Also known as “contactless payment” or “tap to pay.” So I used it for the first time at the gas pump. I was a bit bothered that I didn’t even ask me for my zip code to authorize the transaction. So I decided I needed some RFID/NFC blocking card covers since my wallet is not RFID blocking.
First, I will say that I did research and NFC is the safest technology we have right now to make payments. Either via the card or the phone. Unlike other methods, your card number and name are not transferred. Only a unique encrypted code is. This code changes every time so it’d be pretty hard to spoof. My card was spoofed. I don’t know if they got it online somehow or skimmed it somewhere, but they had a physical copy of my credit card. Swiping a card is the easiest to steal/copy method. People put skimmers on gas pumps and ATMs and steal your card info and pin. Easy peasy. This can also be done with a chip card but it’s much more difficult and therefore unlikely due to the chips encryption. With NFC, you don’t insert your card so they can’t copy it at the point of sell system. So now NFC is the even more secure version. Therefore, I am willing to embrace this technology.
The most powerful NFC is only going to be a few inches using a magnetic field. We’re talking just barely over 1.5 inches (4 cm) on a credit card reader. RFID can be hundreds of meters when it’s used for inventory tracking since it uses radio waves. So even with that tiny range on NFC – I’m uncomfortable. It’s still too close for comfort for me. Either way, they are easy to block. Just need some metal. Nothing fancy. You could totally make your card a little tinfoil hat if you wanted and be completely safe. I chose to order ready-made sleeves. I saw they had cute ones and settled on the LotFancy slips. Or, as Amazon calls them: “LotFancy RFID Blocking Sleeves (19 Pack, 14 Credit Card Sleeves + 5 Passport Sleeves) for Identity Theft Protection, Designed with Cassette Pattern, Smart Slim Design fits Wallet/Purse” (click for link).
As you can already see, they are adorable! There’s 5 passport sleeves and 14 credit card sleeves. They look like old VCR tapes and audio cassette tapes. Ah the good old days. Why have a bunch of grey or navy blue sleeves when you can have THESE? Come on!
Now I will say, I tested them. I figured they would work fine. It’s not like this is advanced technology. However, these are very affordable and who’s to say someone didn’t just print out some card stock and send it out? So first thing I did was test it at the gas pump. I had my card in the sleeve and rubbed it all over the reader. Nothing. So yeah, they work!
I’d give them 5 stars if it weren’t for one thing. In a regular wallet, they are a tight fit. It is actually easier to just slide the card out of the sleeve in your wallet than to pull it out in the sleeve. So that’s what I’ve been doing. I just leave the sleeve in my wallet and pull out the card, then carefully return it to the sleeve. So 4.5 stars from me. Though honestly, I don’t see how this could possibly be avoided. Any material is going to add some bulk to the card. Therefore, I imagine any slip would be just as tight in your wallet.
For now, I’m going to enjoy the peace of mind of safety and the new pops of color in my wallet! I put them over my cards and then realized your passport card actually says to store it in a sleeve on the card. So yeah, it went in one too.
Added bonus. Today we were in a training talking about safety and the instructor asked who had their credit cards in RFID blocking sleeves. Only two of us raised our hands. I even proved it and showed how cute mine are. Win.
Haha. You got me! Mosquitos treat me like free money. No, not “prime rib.” Even the vegans are going out of their way to bite me. So I’ll try anything. I get big welts that itch for days. So I saw this thing has so many great reviews and I buy it immediately.
Well, last night there was a mosquito in my house. He got me THREE times. Twice on my arm and on my forehead. I remember the “Bug Bite Thing” and immediately give it a try. I am very impressed that it actually has so much suction power.
You know what happens when you suck on someone’s skin for too long? It’s called a hickey. I know this. We all know this. How did this not occur to me? Now THERE’S A HICKEY WITH A BUG BITE IN THE MIDDLE OF MY GOD DAMNED FOREHEAD.
I’m so embarrassed. I showed my husband this morning and told him how embarrassed I was. HE LAUGHED AT ME. He told me I did it to myself. And you know what? I did. And that makes it worse.
“Full disclosure, living “rent-free in my head” is not exactly the real estate windfall it’s been made out to be. That neighborhood has a TON of issues.” – Jonathan Edward Durham
