And Galah of the Year goes to........

What a day was yesterday.
I lost my blog identity. Piss off Google+ and the Chrome you've been sniffing.
I was credit card scammed over the phone.
Then there was the burial plot/funeral insurance scam in the morning.
And in the afternoon they tried for the Centrelink pension scam again.

Antikva did her best but could only assume I bonked some button that connected blogger with google and deleted myself. I was a non-blogger for a day and almost had a melt down. I had a blog post to put up. I sent off 3 emails to Blogger, put Googlechrome in the sin bin, IE8 is my browser and google is default search.
I managed to get the blog page up but couldn't access dashboard so I clicked on create blog up in the corner and sneakily crawled in the back way to old dashboard and took up their invite to new dashboard. I was back, did the post and fingers crossed it was up but I still couldn't access half the blogs until late last night when Me was restored to JahTeh.

In the meantime I had told the funeral insurance/burial plot seller to piss off as I felt I already had one foot in the grave.

Next call was very official from the bank.  Now question time, how many of you know that the first four numbers on a credit card is the same for everybody?  Shut up you smarties.
This member of the Peter Sellers Memorial Call Centre had a lot of my information and I realised later where she'd gotten it from and the scam went like this.
Bank of Melbourne has been overcharging fees for some years and the department of consumer affairs had ordered refunds for customers. Gong number 1 should have gone off then as I've banked with St. George which has just merged with BofM so I shouldn't have been affected.
They had my address plus post code. Asked if I did internet banking. Asked If I did phone banking and did I do it with mobile calls. Checked my birthdate which they had. Asked to check my bank card details or my credit card details. Okay getting edgy here and my bank account is linked to mother's and a lot of money there so went with credit card which has only debt.
Before this, I was told that the consumer affairs person would ring today (Saturday) and when I pointed this out, she said they were working overtime on this problem. Gong 2, a government department working overtime to help a bank.  I was given a password. I had to ask the consumer dept worker ant for their password so that it matched mine and I would know I was secure.  Now comes the scam part. In order to have my refund I would have to pay a one off bank tax, if I had a refund of $4,000 then I would have to pay $400 and I could pay it at any post office then I would have the money.
So stupidly and knowing it was stupid as soon as the numbers were out of my mouth, I gave them the credit card numbers and the CVV number on the back. Bingo, they had what they wanted, credit card fraud was out of the starting blocks.

As soon as I hung up, I rang Bank of Melbourne, cancelled the card and had a watch put on all accounts.  The girl was good, she'd had so many calls this week about this particular scam that she knew all the details, made sure my last transaction was mine then cancelled everything. I felt such an idiot but she said it wasn't only old people (me?) that were being caught this time, the younger ones were as well and they were giving out mobile numbers so at least I hadn't done that. I don't give my mobile number to anyone except the nursing home. She also asked if any official mail had gone missing but everything like bank statements and centrelink (more about them later) are filed straight after I review the credit card statement. I mean I'm so paranoid about identity theft that I take my name and address off every parcel I receive from overseas before it goes in the recycle bin.  I will have a new credit card sometime next week. And I rang the nursing home to make sure that none of the residents did their own banking and the assistant DoN said her card had been hacked to the tune of $81,000 in America and this was while she was on the phone with the bank who were checking an item for $60.

Late in the afternoon while I was still wrangling blogger, another phone call comes in.
Not Mrs....... but my first name and last name together. This is a call from Centrelink regarding my pension from another member of the PSMCC. She was told (crudity coming up) to shove her scam up her twat and don't ring again. Surprisingly she hung up.

And about Centrelink who now are pushing for not sending out pension statements but want everyone to see their details online. After today I want everything in writing which I need to have as Power of Att. for mother.  So I'll be stomping up to centrelink on Monday to get her bank balance adjusted and told I don't have online access. Not only do they want me to go online for details but print it out as well.  With all this going on, I'm not surprised I was ripe for scamming.
 I forgot, the details for the bank scam, remember the centrelink scam from a few weeks back, yep all those details were enough to start off the bank one.

How did I ever do it?

When Mum and I started crafting in the early eighties, it was imagination all the way with very little in the way of craft books or patterns unless we're talking knitted tea cosies or baby stuff.  The massive boom in patchwork and quilting was still 12 years away and making your own jewellery no more than stringing round beads together.

The brooches came about when I had felt ovals left after embroidering photo frames. I mean they did have to have somewhere for the picture to show through. The one on the left, cream one isn't as delicate as the black. I exchanged green thread for gold metal and later instead of freehand embroidery of the bows, I used small gold metal bows. Then I moved on to embroidering on pure silk, highlighting with very tiny pearls and putting them into gold and silver surrounds.

With the first brooches I did everything. The internal support was cut from cardboard after being traced from my template. My thumbs did ache after cutting out a hundred 6cm x 4.5cm ovals and not one to waste, small pieces of cardboard became smaller and cheaper brooches without bows. 

The guipure lace trim would never go around and lay flat without a small piece cut out of the edge.  Something that one woman never got the hang of when she tried teaching a class using one of my brooches as her own. A loyal customer came to the market and told me.  So the roses followed the same pattern on each, just the colours changed and those bows were a horror to get even. The felt was glued to the cardboard and pinking shears used to make the zigzag edge which was then glued down without buckling.  The back went on with a simple safety pin pushed through the felt. I did have a photo but the computer went on strike when I was trying to load it.

At first it was just the guipure but I thought it was a little too plain so in between the tiny arches of the guipure I'd drop a little glue and then with a darning needle, pick up the pearls and drop them on the glue making sure the holes couldn't be seen.  I think the most I ever sold was 35 at the Christmas market of l989 and I charged a whopping $6 each. I made more money at that market than I'd ever seen and I bought a Hoover vac with it. The vac's still going strong even if I'm not.

By l992, the brooch market was dead and so were my photo frames. I was ahead of the times for embroidery, during the nineties it became big, ribbon embroidery, Brazilian, petit point, cross stitch and books for it all.  Then came Tracey Marsh with her 'How to make' books and suddenly every woman and dog became a crafter, even later came the smarties who cut out the fabric and sold ready to make kits.  Mum and I managed to keep ahead of the pack by changing the things we made, babies everything for mum and I found a hole in the market for wedding favours.  That was until dressmakers began using left over from the wedding dresses and made to match.  One of our fellow stall holders said that if we saw an idea in an American magazine then we had 6 months to make and sell it before it reached here and everyone was into it. She was dead right.

Hate google chrome and google and the new comments box

What stupid idiot re-arranged all the comments, the verification and generally put me in a bad mood?

And for heaven's sake don't click on this photo or it will look like it's going to eat you.  Another bloody stupid thing to learn, how to get the photos small.
Anyway today's Wednesday so I ate this on Monday and enjoyed every delicious bite. Mind you, it wasn't that big but cherry ripe sponge with coconut and large morello cherries and a thin layer of chocolate sponge in the middle. It was covered in a thin layer of chocolate and I only ate this because mother got in and grabbed the last of the lemon meringue.
The Trevally was a bit overcooked and overpriced but then so was the Barramundi we had at the last place.  I haven't been to The Sandy pub since I can't remember when and the view over the bay was fantastic but while the air-con was icy inside, outside was like a sauna.  Very wheelchair friendly but the chairs were murder. The sharp edge of the back hit the spine and really hurt everyone but especially me who spent half the night with ice packs on the one spot I don't need to be hit on.
Most of us decided on fish and salad but mother wanted old fashioned sausages and mash until she saw the Guinness beef pie and Irish mash which came with a can of Guinness. She didn't drink that but passed it on. She did a good job on the pie though and the lemon meringue.  One and a half hours is tops for her, mostly it's getting in and out of the taxi.
I left about four when they were putting her to bed and she went to sleep, through tea, until breakfast the next morning.
Even though it's a bit pricey, $9 for a glass of wine but only $3.50 for soda, lime and bitters (mine), we've decided to go again simply because of the spaciousness of the dining area and the view. But we're changing the chairs whether they like it or not. 

This was supposed to be "MY YEAR"

According to all the stars at the end of last year plus all of those stars predicted a new baby coming in to my life and all I'm thinking is, my granddaughters couldn't be that stupid, surely not but we know the stars never lie and I'm not going to be a greatgrandmother just an interested onlooker.

So here is eldest granddaughter, 19 in February not 20 as I thought. One loses track when their bitchqueenoftheuniversemother doesn't let them keep in touch with me not to mention her consort bastardoftheuniversestepfather.  Youngest does email but has to sneak photos to me and as their internet was slow I only received this one. She's working two jobs to keep a roof over her head while my 39 year old teenage father to be is still living here but enough of him, blood pressure goes up. I should yell and throw his things into the street but it wouldn't make him face reality, he has to leave on his own or it won't mean he's growing up.

Now down to my year, all good things happening but with only one full moon in my sign this year and it's gone. 

1. Mother is still with us, well me mostly since I'm the one carrying the bird seed bells and the books and all the other crap she needs/wants immediately.

2. Weight.  Right back to where I was 10 years ago and very pissed off. And pissed off was where I was 10 years ago until I suddenly became very happy and dropped weight like 6 biggest loosers. I hate that show, utter crap. If it was that easy with weight lifting I should be sylph like with the family I'm carrying on my back.

3. I'm healthy apart from blood pressure (goddess knows why) Diabetes (my name is copperwitch and I am a chocoholic) dodgy knees (jeebus Southland raise your damn toilets to people height,we're not all gnomes) and now a tear in the Achille's tendon. Of course it would be the left leg, always the left leg. It's like that movie where they transplant the murderer's hands and the guy starts killing people. It's the same with the left leg, it's always getting in the way and falling over, I'm sure it belonged to someone else who was fat and clumsy.

4. Money. For some reason, I'm a little in front. Absolutely nothing to do with playing the pokies.  And, 'Getup', stop sending me petitions calling for the abolition of poker machines, I feel like a hyocrite if I sign them.

5. Family. Me losing, them winning. What can I say, once a family doormat always a family doormat.

The good news is that I only appear to have a small tear in the Achille's. That's as far as the experts in thin leg ultrasounds can tell. Doc Marvin was more positive. I was more positive after googling (sue me for using your crappy name!) ruptured Achille's tendon. I don't advise the squeamish to google (go on get me again) images. There's a site  devoted to the experiences of people with ruptures (no not the ones ascending) and the neg and pos of surgery, plaster, moonboots. Now there's a joy, you can take them off to go to bed but you must put them back on even if you're only going for a pee and as a nightly frequent pee'r that comes under the heading of sheer hell.

I digress (and now need a pee) but from the reading I have only a small tear which will heal with the help of scar tissue and probably hold.  Most on this forum are basketballers, marathon runners, all that masochistic stuff and just can't wait to get back to breaking and tearing some other body part.  The self healing part happened to a lot who had only a small tear, colour me happy.  Thank you Antikva for telling me to strap it with Fixomul stretch tape, now get down here and do it for me. What a bluebird of happiness stretch ultra sticky tape is to get on the back of a foot below a fat leg that belongs to someone else and doesn't co-operate.

And just when you really need that half price taxi card, the micro chip fritzes itself. Happily fritzed chips are the taxi directorate's fault and I don't have to pay $16 for a new card but I have to wait a week for it to arrive.  Oh dear, sorry mother, can't stagger to the bus this week but I will meet you for lunch on Monday since I'm being picked up.

AAAAAAAAnd I'm signing up for online shopping with both Coles and Woolies. Whichever store has the best bargains for the week, gets my shopping. Lateral thinking, I haz it.

 Lucky Rio Tinto, with all of W.A. to plough around in, it manages to find this 12.76 carat pink diamond. The largest of the rare and precious pink stones ever found in the resources-rich West.



Named the Argyle Pink Jubilee, the huge rough stone was found at Rio's pink diamond operations in the Kimberley region.


"This rare diamond is generating incredible excitement. A diamond of this calibre is unprecedented -- it has taken 26 years of Argyle production to unearth this stone and we may never see one like this again," said Josephine Johnson from Rio's Argyle Pink Diamonds division.


Rio produces more than 90 percent of the world's pink diamonds from the Argyle mine, and said large stones like the Jubilee typically went to museums, were gifted to royalty or end up at prestigious auction houses like Christie's.



Christie's had only auctioned 18 polished pink diamonds larger than 10 carats in its 244-year history, Rio said.


When the Jubilee diamond has been cut and polished it will be graded by international experts and showcased globally before being sold by invitation-only tender later this year.


It would be nice if Gina R picked up the tab and presented it to Her Majesty.
 
I'm hoping they make a documentary of the cutting and polishing and that it turns out to be absolutely flawless.