Angela Law

animal lover, gardener, knitter, and gourmet cook
 
books

the poet

This one was very twisty. Just when you thought things were exposed, it went in another direction. I liked this book, but it took me a while to read. At first glance, it reminded me of Hark! but Connelly managed to pull off a similar idea without being cheesy. For what it’s worth, it was the first book in Michael Connelly’s Jake McEvoy series. I read another book from Connelly a while back and seemed to like that one a bit more, but it was from a different series. Anyway, I’d definitely read him again.

My rating: 3.5/5

finances

the plot thickens

Late last week, we received a Monthly Notice of Compensation Charged for Prime Design Solutions’ unemployment account. Guess who it was for? That’s right, me. It was somehow related to the fraudulent unemployment claim 2 years ago. Anyway, I filed a fraud report for myself on the PA UC website and need to call them this week about the company. So it looks like whoever is doing this signed up for unemployment again and tried to open a deposit account for the money.

I tried working through the fraud stuff for myself last week, but my grandmother died the previous weekend and I was tied up with funeral stuff the 2nd half of the week. But, I wrapped that up over the weekend and didn’t find anything suspicious on my credit reports, which is good.

My grandmother died after a short illness, so it was kind of expected. She had some other health issues in the past year and was slowing down. At the age of 94, she was still living on her own and if she would have made it, she would have had to move into a home, which she would have not liked. We should all be so lucky to make it into our 90s and still be living on our own.

finances

stolen identity

Recently, I received a letter at the office saying that a savings account I opened was closed because they couldn’t confirm my identity. I had not opened an account so I called the bank that issued the letter and was connected with their fraud department. Someone opened the account under my name, using my SSN & birthday, and the office’s address. So, now I have to go through a bunch of BS to lock things down. I’m currently working through the recommendations on IdentityTheft.gov.

But, this is not the only incident I’ve had. A couple years ago, I received an unemployment check, also at the office. I filed a fraud claim with the state and never heard back. I guess I should have locked things down at that point.

I have to assume my information is in a DB somewhere…The strange thing is that I have credit monitoring through two of my credit cards and I haven’t seen anything show up that wasn’t legitimate. I guess it could be worse, but it makes me wonder if there are any other accounts out there under my name.

gardening & landscaping, holidays

easter weekend

Jake spent the weekend in Virginia with Amelia and her family. They rented a cabin for the holiday. So, we put to rest our Easter traditions of an Easter egg hunt and a basket of candy. It was a good run, but I guess it was time. My mom usually does Easter dinner, but I hosted it this year.

On Saturday, I went to a gardening seminar at Sandyvale. Ron McIntosh always does the best seminars. This one was “Best Garden Ever” and that also happens to be my yearly mantra. I’m a little behind on gardening. I planted kale and swiss chard the other week but it never sprouted and it looks like something dug up the seeds. So, I restarted them in the house, but they’re going to be getting planted outside awfully late. I have a bunch of other things to plant outside this week and the weather is supposed to be beautiful, so I should be able to get to everything.

A friend told me about this gardening planner and I’ve been using their dates for everything: https://app.seedtime.us/ It seems to be pretty accurate and I was glad that I didn’t have to figure out everything on paper this year.

movies

the menu

I wasn’t sure if I would like this movie, but I did. Sometimes you have to take a chance and watch something different. I thought it was a horror movie but it was more of a satire. I won’t try to explain it because I probably couldn’t anyway.

My rating: 3.5/5