Rough Week

So this month we seem to be dealing with an abnormally large amount of crapola coming our way.  This week is not even half over and it is already particularly special.

Monday our windshield got a monster crack in it in our car.  The downside is a new windshield in that vehicle is $1100(hubbys sportscar/work vehicle).  The upside is that we only have to pay a $300 deductible.  The other upside is that we have sufficient funds in our regular paycheck to cover this and not have to pull from any emergency funds.  We also don't have to eat less this month as a result - happy we are frugal and paid all the gigantic bills off long ago like housing and car payments and are debt free.

Tuesday I woke up to pain in my right foot.  I googled and it turns out I have tendonitis on the top of my foot, likely from having the treadmill at an uphill angle.  I therefore had to take yesterday off doing my 11,000 steps :(  Sounds great doesn't it?  But this means I have to make it up the underage by Sunday to get to 77,000 because I am trying to lose weight again and trying to burn at least 2200 calories a day.  I only got to 6500 steps yesterday so have a lot to make up.  The upside is it feels quite a bit better today after a day of rest and ointment.  I've done a 15 minute stretch this morning on the treadmill to test it on the flat and think it will be fine.  If not I may need to take more days off.

Also on Tuesday I signed into my credit card balance online to find out my credit card had been compromised.  In three days someone had spent over $800 in small charges at itunes.  I immediately cancelled the credit card and the bank is sorting out the charges (in Canada you are very rarely stuck with charges you didn't make, we do have a rather good system here).  It may take up to 10 days to do that and they are mailing me a new credit card.  I then contacted apple and itunes to see if my account there had been compromised.  I spent 70 minutes on the online chat line with two extremely helpful customer service agents.  They determined that in fact my apple id and itunes were fine as a couple of years ago I got alot of itune gift certificates for Christmas and had still been using them up - my credit card was not even on my file.  They had an old record of that credit card number however and quickly traced 8 itunes accounts that were using my credit card.  They immediately shut down those itunes accounts and have advised that if I have any difficulty with the fraudulent charges on my cc to re-contact them to assist with having them refunded.  A crappy but enlightening experience and I was impressed both with my Bank of Montreal Mastercard and the apple employees.  Apple may not have great telephone lines but those people on the online chat are very good at what they do.  Who knows how someone got my credit card, this seems to happen to one of us every other year or so.  Last time it was hubby and the corporate credit card - someone charged hotdogs in Los Angeles and flowers in Langley to his.

Finally we have been trying to sign a contract with a potential client that as of yesterday we have come to the mutual agreement that we hope we don't get this piece of business as he is difficult to deal with and likely would be a thorn in our side during the four month contract.  We are giving him until today to sign or we are moving on with our other potential clients.

I am also closely watching strike action in both Italy and France (use this website if you are interested in travel strikes of any kind around the world, they are pretty great at keeping it updated).  There was supposed to be a transportation strike in Italy today and tomorrow but it was cancelled at the last minute.  They have them regularly but it can really mess up a holiday if you aren't on top of things.  Generally they are planned in advance by a week to 10 days so you can try to make alternative arrangements.  Air France is also having rolling strikes - we are flying to Europe on KLM and back from Paris on Air France who is their partner.  Worse case scenario on that we would end up in Paris for more time than we expect to - not the end of the world but a pain in the butt.

I just had to vent - it is not all sunshine and lollipops all the time here.  I just don't usually harp on about it as tend to take things in stride but this week has been tough to do that.

In the "things I am looking forward to" department - tonight I get together with a friend who I can whine to for a girls night, on the 27th we fly out on our Europe trip and on the 29th we celebrate 15 years from the day we met.  That day will be the day we land in Rome.  We tend to celebrate that more than our wedding anniversary.

Yeah, so I am hoping for a better end to the week than the last couple of days - here's hoping things are better in your world!