Welcome December

Welcome December! Thanksgiving is over and the year is almost done- how fast it always goes by. I guess that is a sign of good times. So what's new? Well, we are donating again for the children's holiday party at the Entre Familia homeless shelter which is run by the Boston Public Health Commission. The party is on December 18. They sent the list of children and their ages over, so we can work on getting appropriate gifts. Most of the children are quite young, including a couple of infants. Our donation last year was very touching last year. It was one of the first times that I got interact directly with the children that receive our items. I didn't realize that we were going to be the sole provider of the holiday gifts last year. I've been putting items aside all year for this party, so we have some items already- I have some action figures, toy cars and Build-a-Bears that have beautiful outfits. I also have some large boxes of crayons and some particularly nice books that would be great gifts. I'm going to buy some more toys. I'll also put the word out on our FB page and ask people if they would like to help- hopefully, we can get a few more items donated. I was reading an article in the Boston Globe today about the record number of homeless families- there are 4,100 homeless families in MA. Half of them are being housed in motels. It is so sad to know that there are so many families that are struggling. I wish we had more resources so that we could help even more.

In other news- a bugger somewhere stole my AmEx business card number, made a fake card and used it in Canada to make purchases at a liquor store, fast food chain and then attempted to buy over $100 worth of items at Toys R Us. I received a call and email from AmEx fraud department on Saturday evening to verify the purchases. I thought they were calling to verify an online purchase I made the night before, so I was shocked to hear about the Canadian charges. AmEx removed the fraudulent charges and my new card should be arriving tomorrow. I had no idea how the number was stolen. I know it happens all the time and there are lots of ways it can be stolen. It is really crappy how people make money by stealing like that. Not only is it simply wrong, but it can create such difficulties for people and businesses. Hopefully, it doesn't happen again. I'm pretty careful where I use my card- it's usually at the same places, so I don't know what happened.

Well, that's the latest for tonight. I'm off to read for a bit. My library book is due in 2 days, so I want to finish it- I can't renew it again. Until tomorrow friends...