Am I Grown-Up Now?

The story of being old, part 1: I got phished this week. The first time in over twenty years on the Internet. I have lots of excuses: it came through on my company account, pretending to be my boss; whilst the ask to go buy a bunch of iTunes gift cards for clients was weird, it was not out of the realm of things I’ve had to do in the past. The PA of the company also didn’t seem suspicious when I told her I was going off to buy them, and in general, I have spent the last couple of months being bounced hither and thither every day to the point where my cognitive reasoning has failed somewhat.

Which is all a bunch of excuses lined to to somehow skip past how I spent Tuesday afternoon bouncing around Cincinnati trying to find $1900 worth of iTunes cards. Even as shops would tell me that they’d only let me buy five due to recent phishing attempts, I’d laugh and say ‘I know, it sounds suspicious! But it’s what my boss wants!’

Eventually, at Best Buy (and after going $500 down and searching through three other shops where they didn’t have $100 cards), they kept on repeating ‘are you sure you’re not being scammed?’ enough that I thought I’d double-check. And lo…the email address after the display name was not quite right.

I was very embarrassed, and very thankful to the Best Buy staff for repeatedly saying ‘No, really, I think you’re being scammed. Honest.’ But, I was only $500 down instead of $1900. So that was…something.

The story of being old, part 2: I replaced a thermostat. Due to it being a fancy(ish) ecobee4, it involved locating the control board on the furnace, turning off power, unscrewing a series of metal panels, connecting wires, and attaching something to a wall. And yes, admittedly, my first attempt on Friday ended up with me sleeping with no air-conditioning. But! The Saturday attempt fixed the connection to the AC unit and I can now use Siri to set my temperature. The future is here! More Nazis than expected, but the future is here!

The story of being old, part 3: ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED — YOU’VE BEEN ACQUIRED

Anyhow! Weekend! Escape Room set in the 1920s! Local Indian food! A literal hole-in-the-wall Venezuelan restaurant where we ordered about three times more food than could actually fit inside our stomachs! SECRET CHRISTMAS PRESENT BUYING AT TARGET! Findlay Market! Football! Bourbon-soaked hazelnuts! Korean-fried chicken with waffles! All things, it turned out, that I really needed…