Tour de Fat!

This weekend to celebrate a pal's birthday, we headed out to the New Belgium Brewery-sponsored Tour de Fat festival in Chicago. Basically you get up very early in the morning to dress up as silly as possible and be a part of a very large bike parade at around 930am. After that, you come back to a park and drink lots of New Belgium beers and are entertained by games and performances of all kinds. It was really quite a blast. The beers were $5 a pop and they had many delicious varieties on tap, including their staple, Fat Tire, and a summer ale called Skinny Dip. All the beers were ice cold and really hit the spot on a hot day like yesterday.

I was dressed like a pirate:

I fit in just fine with all the other zany costumes. We ended up getting there very late and just had enough time to register and throw on a sticker, then suddenly the whole mob of bikes started toward us. Turns out, we were in the FRONT of the parade! So we quickly turned around and led the pack of bikers around the town, and it was quite exhilarating to be in the front of such a fun parade! We were well taken care of by police escorts who blocked traffic for us everywhere we went. It was safe and fun and family friendly. People on the streets seemed happy to see us and stopped to wave and cheer us on!

After the parade, we settled in to relax in the sun and drink the tasty New Belgium selections. There were lots of tents with people selling T-shirts and other fun things. The always enjoyable band Mucca Pazza was on hand to play some summer tunes for a rowdy and happy audience.

We ventured over to the Pit, which was a circular area gated off with all sorts of bicycles made of unlikely materials inside. You could don a helmet and take a spin on any of the artistic creations (if you could manage to figure out how to ride through the muddy grass!). There were tiny bikes and big bikes and bikes built for two or three. There were tires made of tennis shoes and tires that were huge and thick and almost impossible to ride. One of the creations was a three person bike that just curved and connected and went around and around in circles. Riding that one after a few beers proved to be quite the adventure in dizziness!

This bike was my favorite:

All in all, a fantastic way to spend a Saturday morning. We came, we biked, we conquered. I would highly recommend the Tour de Fat to anyone who likes bikes and beer. Well worth the suggested $5 donation and full of the kind of summer fun Chicago is famous for. This day will be marked in my book as one of the most fun summer days I have had in a while. Hooray for New Belgium for putting on a wonderful summer celebration!

The Long Con

I have been on craigslist.com a lot lately, and I recently saw a posting looking for candidates for a focus group about alcohol. Being the fan of imbibing that I am, I dropped them an email asking to take part in it. The exact details are hazy at this point—it has been a while since I first made contact. All I know is, the price was right for the few hours of work they needed.

A few days later I received this email from what I thought was the company:

Dear Applicant
We got your application for the post we advertised, kindly go through the rest of the email as it contains more information on our company and the position.
We are a dynamic organization involved in helping companies achieve market leadership and Improving connections between professional services firms and their client organization. Our company is currently conducting a survey on Western Union Outlets to help measure and improve the services they provide to customers. This is as a result of complaints from Western Union repeat customers about the service quality of most Western Union outlets.
The survey involves you visiting a Western Union Outlet in your area to patronize the services they render as a customer, then give us feedback on your overall customer experience by filling a simple questionnaire.
Each survey takes a maximum of 1hr to complete and you will be paid $250 for every survey completed, No Sales Involved and this will not inconvenience your present job.
If you are interested in participating, please send us a reply with your information in the following order
Full Name
Mailing Address
Cell Phone Number
Email address
Current occupation
Age
We'll get back to you after receiving this information to confirm your participation in the survey.
Thank you.
Your faithfully,
Michelle Baileys
QP Financial Services Inc

Sounds mildly legit, right? And if you happened to be sending out lots of emails for various little gigs here and there in order to make an extra buck or two because you are saving up for your awesome impending nuptials, then perhaps you too, in a moment of poor judgment, would send back your information like I did.

I should have been clued in when Western Union was mentioned. Who the hell uses Western Union anymore, except immigrants sending money back to their families in other countries or scammers that try to steal your money with stupid cons like this one? Ugh. So anyway…

A few days later I get this lovely email, and my inner bullshit meter FINALLY starts to kick in:

Good Morning,

This is to confirm you have been selected as 1 of our 5 Western Union Survey/Evaluation agent in your area.You will be evaluating Western Union outlets in your neighborhood and the survey date shall be communicated to you soon.
Please note that you will be required to visit one Western Union outlet within your neighborhood to patronize their service as a customer and give us feedback on your overall customer experience with them by completing a questionnaire.
We need to know we can trust you with funds that will be used in carrying out the actual survey ,hence we will need you to send us the Name and Mailing Address where you will like the funds sent .
Respond to this email ASAP to show acceptance and willingness to carry out the survey for the company
Thank you and we wait to hear from you today.
Your sincerely,
Michelle Baileys
Market Research Analyst
QP Financial Services Inc.

Funds to be used? Western Union? Something stinks like puppy breath. Plus, my sharp editor's eye notices that the email comes from a one Michelle Bailey and yet these emails are all signed by Michelle Baileys. A small discrepancy but sloppy enough to turn up the volume on my inner alarm. I am suddenly pretty sure I am in the middle of an internet scam. And I have already given these people a lot of my information. Luckily, they did not request anything too personal and I would not have shared that info anyway, but who knows what they can find on me with just a name and address. It gives me the heebie-jeebies just thinking about it. So of course I start sending emails like this one:

Michelle,

Thank you for your email. I would like to participate in the survey. However as many people are, I am a bit skeptical of moving forward without actual person to person contact. The internet can be a very fraudulent place so I am just being cautious to protect myself. Is there any way I can get a link to your organization or a phone number I can call to confirm with you personally that this is a legitimate opportunity for me? I hope you understand my desire to make sure I am not being scammed. A QP Financial Services internet search turned up a financial services and continuing education site that had nothing to do with focus groups such as this, so my guard went up a bit.

I appreciate your understanding, and look forward to hearing from you soon.

No answers. At this point I am positive that my suspicions are correct. I start sending emails like this:

Michelle,

I have become aware of your scam and if I receive anything in the mail I will forward it immediately to the FBI. I researched more about this and found others who have experienced this scam, and this is what they did as well. 

Please take me off your list. 

And this:

PLEASE DO NOT SEND ANYTHING TO ME. THANK YOU.

After that it was pretty quiet. And then the bitch has the nerve to send this to me:

Dear Survey Participant
We are sorry for the delay in correspondence with you. Funds for the survey as just being released by our sponsors and should arrive at the address you provided to us within the week.
Instructions on how to go about about conducting the survey will be sent to you on Thursday. Thank you.

I wanted to tear my hair out. I was not only annoyed at their idiocy, but also my own. How could I—ME!—someone I would consider to be very well educated and downright savvy, have gotten myself into this mess? Why did I fall for it just like all those other poor saps? I guess when you are really hoping some cool opportunity falls into your lap, you will buy into all kinds of things—until it is very obvious that they are too good to be true. I was just slower than usual at realizing the whole “too good to be true” part.

Anyway my final email basically threatened FBI contact yet again (because why the hell not?) and demanded they cease all contact with me. That was the first week of June.

It is now the end of June, and guess what I found waiting for me when I got home today? A huge envelope, sent express mail and shoddily addressed to me from one Michelle Baileys. I kid you not. 

Before even opening it, I immediately called the FBI. It was all I could think to do, and hadn't I already threatened to anyway? I had to back myself up somehow. I assume the woman who answered had to cover the phone with her hand while she laughed at my naivety, but then she stopped giggling long enough tell me to contact the Consumer Fraud department at the Attorney General’s office. I was then directed to ic3.gov to file an official complaint. That is it. That is all you can do. She made sure to stress three times that I was not to cash the check that was probably inside the envelope (really? You think?) and our conversation was over. I decided to open the envelope and get a look at the contents, and was amused to find a very obviously fake check made out to me for $2500.00. Also amusing? The fact that the check was all that was in there. No note, no instructions, no fake survey to complete for Western Union. It was like the scammers gave up and just sent the check anyway, just in case I ended up being a poor, struggling victim of a tough economy who would cash the check out of desperation even though I had made it very clear I was on to them. It was a crap shoot, but they were willing to spend the money for express mail on a whim. Hilarious. And a bit sad.

The whole thing is so ridiculous that I still can’t quite believe this happened. I figured writing about it would help me process it all, and sharing it with others will help spread the word about this particular style of scamming.

Word to the wise—even those fun sounding focus groups can end up being a stupid way to get you involved in one of those dumb scams you think only morons would buy into. You never know when you might become one of those morons yourself. Or maybe that’s just me.

The People Inside The Oil Can

I read a riveting article today on cnn.com about the people who survived the oil rig explosion back in April. It was a long piece--about twelve pages when reading on a handy dandy Blackberry smartphone. Yet the story was well worth the read.

I am sure I will get some flack from readers who have no sympathy for the people who choose to risk their lives to suck Mother Earth dry of her finite vital resources. I am not a fan either, for sure. BP is on my shit list just like they are on everyone else's (except the people they make money for, of course). I heard a theory a few years back that still gives me shivers when I think about it--that perhaps oil is sort of like the Earth's blood, so to speak, and it is found deep inside the "veins" of the planet and is necessary to keep stasis. What we do is like draining the Earth of its blood and sickening it, much like a person drained of blood would be. We need blood flowing through us to sustain our life--why wouldn't the Earth also need this flow to keep living? It is an interesting idea I think of when I hear about our dependency on oil and how we keep poking around deeper and deeper for it. Eventually, we could bleed Earth dry. So anyway, in short, I am not making some big statement about oil, per se.

I just had to express my emotional reaction to the article. I found it quite moving and sad to read the story of how the actual explosion occurred and the lives that were lost as a result. The writers really tried to re-create the drama of the moment and the very real terror these men felt as they realized the gravity of the situation. These guys could have been anyone's friend or loved one, just working the job that was available to them in their particular location or for their area of expertise. Maybe their family has always worked in the oil industry. Maybe they had to take the job because it paid well and their family could be more comfortable. We all take jobs for many reasons, and I am sure they all had good ones. But there they were, on that fateful day, some losing their lives as a result of the disaster.

What really struck me about the story is not only the painful loss of some good men working hard for their families, but also the fact that the oil well had apparently been sketchy from the start and everyone knew it. It had given them a lot of trouble since day one of drilling. Yet they were instructed to plug along, and since they were already behind from other issues that arose, plug along faster and cheaper, if possible. Which sounds normal, purely from a business standpoint. Yet this business is not like Google or Target. This business is dangerous and should be treated appropriately. You cannot rush something so delicate. The nature of the oil business calls for caution and protection of all involved. It seems this would have been written into the business plan from the start, preventing a corporate big-wig from feeling that he has the right to demand a faster process. But that is what appears to have happened, if you believe the initial stories coming out.

Anyway I guess I just wanted to share some thoughts about this unfortunate event. I won't post the gut-wrenching pictures of animals covered in oil that I see all over the internet, or spend hours writing angrily about BP and corporate responsibility. I wanted simply to share a quality piece of dramatized journalism, reflect on a few ideas, and hopefully bring a different perspective to anyone who was curious about the explosion.

Depressed? Try cookies.

Well it has been a long, gloomy June here in Chicago. It basically rains every other day. It's been a pretty consistent pattern of the following:
One great day that is warm and sunny
The next day will be almost too hot and the air will feel humid and heavy and uncomfortable, then it will break out into a big thunderstorm
Next will be a day of raining on and off all day
Finally we will get another single comfortably warm and sunny day. And the cycle repeats like that again and again all through the month of June

Well I am awfully sick of it.

My mood has taken a cue from the weather and plummeted into sadness with a hint of irritation with the world. Try as I might, I have not been able to shake the feeling that everything sucks. It's silly, I know. Cognitively I know this. But try telling that to the emotionally sensitive little girl taking up residency in my soul. She seems to think that nothing is going our way and that we are huge, ugly, untalented and unable to get what we want. Unfortunately, she is pretty convincing these days. I am totally falling for her take on the world. And I can't seem to stop it.

It does not help that I have been sick, which means I have had plenty of time to think about how lame everything is while I lay on the couch watching network TV. No wonder I am depressed! If I stumble upon one more reality show where stupid idiots are featured and seem to be doing just fine in their freaky little lives, I think my self-esteem or what is left of it will shrivel up and die. These people managed to get other people to watch them do really dumb stuff and make money doing it. How is that happening while I can't even land a job that will allow me some growth potential? It all makes no sense. The little girl in me agrees and feeds that mentality with her little voice telling me I can't catch a break.

So here I am going along all bitter-faced and sad. I am short-fused and curt to everyone I encounter. I am on the verge of tears at every bump in the road I experience. I am disenchanted with life. I am annoyed with friends and loved ones because no one can pull me out of this funk but myself. It has been like this for a few weeks now.

Well I am awfully sick of it.

So tonight I decided to try to write a little (which always makes me feel better) and bake some freakin' cookies. I baked the shit out of those stinkin' cookies. And you know what? They were delicious. I stuffed my stupid sad face full of chocolate chip cookies. I let myself eat way more of them than I should have, and now my stomach feels mildly bloated in that sugary-overload kind of way. And it is great. GREAT, I tell you!

I actually feel better already. Sometimes, if you have the emotionally sensitive little girl bitching and moaning inside, you just have to shut her the hell up by eating some cookies. It helps. I swear.

A Salmon Surrounded by Hawks

I will preface this post with a quick word about how lovely it is that Chicago's beloved Blackhawks hockey team earned themselves the infamous Stanley Cup this week. They completely deserved it (especially that guy who lost 7 teeth in one game) and I have nothing but respect and pride for the team. I was there at the bar Wednesday night just like everyone else in the city, drinking heavily and watching in anticipation until Patrick Kane found a way to slip that puck right past the goalie for the final winning point. It was great and exciting and hugging strangers was fun.

Today was the official Blackhawks celebration downtown. A parade was scheduled, as was a rally at the end of said parade. I happened to have been called in to an important meeting at 930am. Location? Basically a block from ground zero where all the after-parade festivities would be taking place. Little did I realized how very screwed this would make me later.

I arrived early just in case of delays from the events of the day, and I was able to snake through the already huge crowd and get to the building by walking about a block and a half out of my way to find a place that had not been barricaded off for the parade already. I easily maneuvered to the entrance of the building, and was pleased to find it was not as crowded as I thought it would be. This was at 9am. At that point, I noticed that people were covering the awning out front with a HUGE Blackhawks sign. I should have realized then that I was a goner.

The meeting got out around 11am. Right smack in the middle of parade time. I figured there would at least be space for people to walk along behind the spectators. I thought wrong.

There is no stopping hockey fans, my friends. They will stand, hang, climb, or scramble to anywhere they see an open space to view these heroes of theirs. And I understand that. I just figured I would at least be able to move, albeit slowly, to where I needed to go. Nope. I was stuck in any direction I tried to go. I was surrounded by drunk super-fans with no way out. In the most humid day of summer thus far. Wearing a freaking suit coat. And wearing flip-flops, just asking for my toes to be stepped on. It was awful. I did manage to enjoy myself for about 5 minutes when the parade came by and I was close enough to see the team members celebrating in their double decker buses. Also, I marveled at the amount of confetti in the air. I had never seen so many tiny colors floating through the air. It was actually quite stunning.

I eventually found a way to swim upstream amidst what I later learned was 2 million people. But not until I had tried several different routes that led to dead ends or just too many people to fight through, and I had sweat through my suit coat and tank-top underneath. The sun beat down on me oppressively and I am pretty sure my face is fried from not wearing sunscreen (I did not expect to be outside for that long after my meeting. Silly me).

Eventually I found my way to an L train stop, but because of the massive amount of people there for the Hawks celebration, I had to wait for 6 trains to go by in order to actually be able to board one. And by board I mean cram my way on by contorting my body into an "s" shape and shoving my elbow into the breast of the woman next to me. It was a real treat, let me tell you.

Finally I made it home, a mere 2 and a half hours after I started on my journey. Normally, this commute would take a half hour during the evening rush after work. Today, it was epic. I am proud, though. This little salmon found her way upstream despite adversity. Let this be a metaphor for all of us--perseverance will get us where we want to go...eventually. And wherever you are going--don't wear flip flops.

Yesterday was an exciting day. Not only was it gorgeous out (until it poured in the afternoon, which Chicago loves to do randomly) but even better than that, Adam and I got to head out to Wisconsin to re-visit the place where we got engaged. 

I am not sure if I ever wrote about this in past posts, but Adam had the great idea to surprise me and propose after we decided to skydive together for our 4 year anniversary. He knows me very well and I told him from day one that if he ever proposed, he better do it in some cool crazy way because that will make me say yes for sure. Well he heeded my advice and last July we went to Skydive Midwest to jump out of an airplane. He jumped out first and had it all planned out to surprise me with the ring when I landed. Everything went perfectly and I was totally clueless and it made for probably the most romantic and wonderful moment of my life thus far. There is much more to the story but I won't bore you will details only he and I can appreciate. However, I do need to mention that Skydive Midwest happened to be holding a fundraiser for their Tandem For Troops program the same day we were jumping. So our waiting time was filled with cheap hotdogs, rock music and numerous games to keep us occupied. 

There was also a raffle going on, and Adam is a fan of donating to a good cause via raffle ticket. He is very lucky, you see. This particular day, he was luckier than usual because he won like 3 prizes (not to mention a brand new fiancée!) They kept calling his name and it was pretty hilarious. Finally they pulled a ticket for the grand prize--a FREE flight lesson at the tiny airport they used for flying jumpers out--Aeris Aviation. Of course, the name they called was Adam's. So we walked away newly engaged, newly experienced at skydiving, and with prizes to boot. It was a heck of a day.

Back to the present. It has been almost a year since we got engaged (wow time flies!) and Adam's flight lesson was just about to expire so we decided to hop in the car and drive back out to where the magic happened so that he could reap the rewards of his raffle luck.

Our instructor, Monty, was an absolute joy to hang out with and we had a blast with him. Our little plane was cute and fun and Adam got to learn the ins and outs of being an aircraft pilot. I myself sat excitedly in the back of the tiny Cessna, enjoying the ride and secretly hoping we did not crash. But I had nothing to worry about—Adam was like an old pro, according to Monty. We took off easily and soon Adam was steering us through a cornflower blue sky. We were just below the clouds for the most part, and every now and then we got bumped around by them, which was fun and terrifying all at once (my personal favorite of all feelings).

Here are some pictures of what it was like:

We ended up flying over Lake Geneva and various other little Wisconsin lakes and farms. Pretty freaking cool. At then end, Adam helped land us easily and we were done with that adventure. We lingered around a bit to reminisce about last July when he got down on one knee. We watched the skydivers jumping into the great white clouds above us and I remembered what it was like to taste those clouds, how it felt to free fall and feel like they were choking me as I flew through them at an intense speed. What a rush!

This time around Adam and I were in the air together in a different way. But we still needed the trust between us to be strong like it was when we skydived. This time, Adam had our lives in his hands and he steered us along just fine. At the end of the lesson, Monty commented that we were a very cool couple and that that helps when he is teaching someone to fly. He said we seemed fearless, which was so important not only in flying an airplane, but also in life. I laughed and said that I was secretly a little nervous but was good at pretending I wasn’t. Then I added that Adam makes me feel safe and helps me stay fearless.

And I realized suddenly what a true statement that is. When you think about it, isn’t that what everyone hopes to find in a partner?

Adam may be luckier than me when it comes to winning raffles. But I think I got pretty lucky too when he decided to spend the rest of his life with me.