Life is Weird

It's been a busy week around here!

• On a happy note, we are into monsoon season now which included a huge rain/thunderstorm this afternoon.  I love it!
• The Trump assassination attempt was absolutely bizarre.  The Secret Service can't possibly be that inept and at this point, the conspiracy theories sound more logical than the official narrative.
• The cats are happy to be inside during the heat of the day but I think I am allergic to them.  We have never had animals in the house (all of our cats and dogs had been outdoor pets like barn cats and large dogs that stayed outside) so I didn't know about this allergy until now.  And they have fleas. Ick.  I will try to stay away from them until the weather cools off and we can relegate them to being outside 24/7.
• The female cat is in heat again so there are all kinds of mangy tom cats hanging around.  While the female cat will come into our house when it is super hot outside, she is extremely skittish and will bolt out the door if we step foot in the kitchen.  We really need to trap her somehow and get her fixed but the organization that does that in our city has been so overwhelmed with requests that they don't even return calls or emails now.
• I was strong and resisted buying anything on Amazon Prime Day.  There is nothing that we needed so it was better to just save our money.
• I was shopping today and a guy that was walking close behind me when I was walking from one end of the outdoor shopping center to the other was chased out by security when I went into a store.  It was so strange but the security guy said the homeless-looking guy that was behind me had been banned from every store in the shopping center because he always steals and causes problems for the store staff.  I think I need to pay more attention to my safety when I walk! eeekkk 

10 Concerning Financial Issues

This has been a weird week in financial issues...

1. First, I got a notice from my credit card asking if I was making a few transactions with the card.  I wasn't, in fact I had only used that card once several months ago and I keep it locked up and don't even carry it with me.  The bank declined the transactions then cancelled the card and sent me a new card.  I asked the fraud department lady how this could have happened since I don't even use the card or have it with me and she said it could be any number of ways, even just a random computer generation of numbers that happened to end up being my card number.  eeekkk
2. Next I checked my free credit reports just to make sure there wasn't any other weird things happening with my credit and thankfully everything looked fine (I keep a credit freeze on all of my credit reports so no one can open fraudulent accounts in my name so maybe this helped?).
3. Then at work a check got deposited into our bank account that caused a kerfuffle with the accounting team (if ANY money is put in or taken out of our accounts without documentation there will be a kerfuffle as the money needs to be accurate down to the penny).  We called the issuer of the check and they did not know anything about the check then called our bank fraud department which is taking care of the situation.  I immediately thought this could be a common scam so hopefully this situation gets taken care of and never happens again.  double eeekkk
4. A couple days later I get a notice from another bank we use at work and they blocked a check because they said the signatures of the sender and depositor didn't look right.  I looked through several past checks signed by the same people and everything looked the same.  Weird.  The issue got resolved but I wonder if banks are just being extra careful these days or if some wonky AI is causing such issues?
5. On another security note, here is a good video on how to improve the security of your phone.
6. We have been talking about buying a new house that is more "elderly appropriate" (ie: single level, walk in shower, senior community, etc) but as is pointed out in this article, downsizing would actually cost us more money than staying where we are!  Our house payment would go up, our interest on the mortgage would go up, our property tax would go up, our house insurance would go up, etc.  Bummer.
7. FWIW, our schools begin in early August (!) something I had never heard of before moving to Las Vegas as everywhere else we have lived, schools started in September.  Anyway, just a reminder to buy a full year's worth of school supplies for each of your kids while they are super low-priced then save half to give to the kids when their second semester starts in the winter (the regular price of school supplies is pretty expensive if you don't buy during the deeply-discounted 'back to school' sales).
8. Thinking about finances, and house insurance, I grabbed my cell phone and went room-by-room videoing every room and everything we own.  I do this about once a year so that if our house is ever burglarized/destroyed we would have a good video of everything we own in order to make an insurance claim.
9. Amazon Prime Day will be July 16 and 17.  I don't think we really need anything (plus I cancelled Prime ages ago) so I probably won't be buying anything, so just an FYI.
10. Finally, I am pretty much getting tired of consumerism in general (prices are high, quality is lacking, people in stores act like maniacs, etc).  Here is a related video from Prepper Princess.

One Hot Car

Hopefully the weather will cool off soon so I can stop whining about the heat.  Here is the temperature of our car a couple days ago...

Inside

Outside (it did drop down to 120 when we started driving)

It's Hot(ter)!

I thought it was hot last week, but yesterday we set an all-time record of 120 degrees in Las Vegas.  It was "only" supposed to be 117 degrees yesterday so what's a few more degrees?  It looks like it is going to be a long, hot summer :/    And here are the cats trying to escape the heat...

After the 4th of July

Our 4th of July evening was spent hoping our neighborhood wouldn't burn down since so many neighbors were setting off professional-grade fireworks.  It sounded like a war zone around here for hours but fortunately the only casualty seems to be the neighbor's garbage can (see photo above).  My other neighbor was out of town but she said she was watching the barrage via her security system and was worried about her house too since everything is so hot and dry and there were fireworks sparks going everywhere.  Anyway, a couple days later and all is well (except the aforementioned garbage can).  Here are 10 more things we did during this holiday weekend...

1. I bought a few books of stamps because the price will soon be going up.
2. We went to both Costco and Sam's Club to stock up on food (flour, sugar, soap, etc).  We do this about every six months and since the price of everything seems to be increasing and preparedness is top of mind, we figured we might as well have a good supply of food supplies on hand (plus there were a lot of sales!).
3. The cats have been coming and going all weekend.  They show up at the door, we let them in to eat and drink some cold water, they take a nap, then they leave for a few hours.  Rinse and repeat.  At least they are staying marginally cool in this excessive heat.
4. Hubby trimmed my hair.  He is pretty good at cutting hair so I have him trim mine a couple times between professional cuts.
5. I like doing find-a-word puzzles but was disappointed that I couldn't find these books in either Costco or Sam's Club.  Fortunately I found them on Amazon for even less than what I had been paying for these books at Costco so I ordered three big books of find-a-word puzzles.
6. I love the idea of small (not tiny) houses and there are plenty of ideas for inspiration on this topic on YouTube.
7. Most of the weekend we just stayed home and out of the 110+ degree weather.  There are SO MANY free movies on Roku and Samsung TV that we may even cancel Netflix (hubby has seen nearly every movie on Netflix anyway as he loves to watch movies).
8. I've pretty much given upon Reddit (it seems to be 50%+ bots these days) but I do like checking r/frugal for good ideas on how to save money.
9. I also like "cool finds" type posts on Bored Panda.
10. We need to stop eating out so much.  While lifestyle creep has not been much of an issue for us, we do tend to eat out more these days.  We need to curtail this as it is much cheaper and MUCH healthier to eat at home!

Happy 4th of July!

I just want to wish you all a Happy (and Safe!) 4th of July!

One Hot Cat

This is my cat. Well, not my cat exactly as I have never petted her or played with her because she is a feral cat that does not seem to like people much at all.  She will usually stop by for breakfast and dinner (cat food only, she doesn't like people food) but the past couple days she showed up in the afternoon panting like mad (she looked like she was going to have heat stroke! plus she is pregnant) so we opened the door and she came in and took a nap.  She doesn't want the door closed (she leaves part of her tail sticking out of the door and if we get too close she will jump up and quickly leave) which leaves us with a problem...we can't air condition the whole outdoors.  Plus later this week it is supposed to hit 117 degrees (!) here so I am guessing we might end up with a whole colony of feral cats camped out in the kitchen to stay cool.  Hubby and I are now discussing ways to build the feral cats a house with air conditioning.  ayayay