Flats and Fraud

The last couple of days have been an adventure. It started with a flat tire and ended in fraud.

Saturday afternoon found my husband and me driving through a rainstorm. It had been raining for about 48 hours, which is weather more akin to a tropical storm in Florida. Most of the time we can just drive in and out of the rain or wait five minutes for a break in the clouds.

Just down the street from our apartment, we started hearing a rhythmic thumping coming from the underside of the car. I always jump to the worst possible scenario, having spent just under 10 years driving a finicky old Dodge.

"Great," I think, "something screwed up my axle."

My husband tends to be the optimist in our relationship and says we probably just drove over something that attached itself to the undercarriage. We were both wrong.

It was pouring when we stopped the car. We ran upstairs with the groceries and figured we'd check when the rain stopped. The possibility of a flat had crossed our mind and we assumed it would be pretty damn obvious in a few hours if that were the case.

The next day, it was still pouring. It dropped to a light drizzle mid-morning and I was entirely too nervous, so we went downstairs to check the car.  He watched as I slowly rolled the car out of the lot and, lo and behold, a HUGE BOLT was stuck in the tire tread. I mean, this thing was thumb-thick. Luckily, there was a washer attached, which had kept the tire from deflating. It was in there good enough that the pressure held.

For some ungodly reason, I forget that spare tires exist. I decide to drive the car to the closest auto shop to get the tire repaired or replaced. My husband follows me in his car so we have transportation if my tire goes flat.

About 1-2 miles from the shop, I suddenly saw my husband's car rapidly shrink away in my rear view mirror. His car decided to die instead of mine. Long story short, the alternator had reached the end of its life. Not 30 seconds later, my tire blows. It was announced by a loud THUD and the clang of a nail flying out of the tread and hitting the wheel well.

I'm close enough to the mechanic that I flop the rest of the way into the lot. So, there we are, my husband stuck on the side of the road and me stuck at the auto shop, neither of us able to reach the other. He was stuck for about an hour until AAA could tow him to the shop where I was. We were stuck there another 2 hours until the tire could be replaced.

The next day we learn that the alternator for his car would cost about $500, which is exactly the blue book value of the car. We junked it.

We went car shopping the next day. My husband needs a car to get to work and we end up looking for a car the worst possible way - in a rush. A used Ford won the day as we sat waiting for financing information. As we're dealing with percentages, I'm told my husband doesn't have the best credit.

"Wait," I say, "we just got a new car a few months ago and we both had stellar credit."

The person helping us proceeds to say my husband has a few late payments on a line of credit with a certain bank. Problem is, we've never used that bank! Ever!

Fraud.

Once we get home, my husband looks into it and learns that someone took out a line of credit in his name when he was fifteen!

The crazy thing is, regardless of how inconvenient and stressful the whole ordeal was, this all happened in the best way possible. It was better for my husband's car to die about a mile from a mechanic rather than on his 45-minute drive down rural roads to work. He pulled over in a safe area, just before reaching a large highway exit ramp that merged onto the road. If we hadn't gone to look for another car we wouldn't have found out about the credit fraud, which could have destroyed us in the long run, as all the horror stories go. If not for my flat tire, we never would have learned of this. It was one of those moments where you have to figure someone was looking out for you.

Basically, thank you for the bolt in my tire, my forgetfulness when it comes to spares and the dead alternator. They could have saved us from a much bigger problem. At first I hoped this stroke of bad luck wasn't karma-related. In hindsight I can see that if it was karma, I must have done some good.

Renewal and the Opening of Doors

This past month flew by. Work has been busy, but the stress has returned to manageable levels. Thankfully, we're in one of the small dips in the roller coaster. These usually only last about a week or two, but it's great when they come around. I've had a chance to catch up without having to work on a Sunday!

New happenings are on the move, too! First of all, BNK now has its own domain - BraveNewKitchen.com! I've also finally started getting ideas for what I plan to be my life's work. I've always wanted to publish and the ideas are starting to flow in. Can't get too far into it, but the process has started percolating in me and it's so exciting.

I'm started to open the door into the world of marketing, too. Sure, I used to be a Marketing Coordinator, but it was for an engineering firm. Our marketing consisted of sending proposals to solicit work. It had more in common with the sales department at my current job than the marketing department. I'm learning about search engine optimization (SEO), analytics, marketing plans, social media marketing (which I've already done on a personal level), etc. There is so much to learn, but my work family is keen on helping me through it. I'm just so happy to be learning again. More on that later.

In one of our work discussions about SEO, we decided to check the SEO score of our new website. Leads had been dropping and we wanted to know why. I didn't even know you could do this, but we went to a marketing company's site and checked it for free. It evaluates number of links on your site, readability, search engine results and other details that help or hurt your site and someone's ability to find it. We found some things to fix, but when we came across our readability score, I zoomed in. I wrote all the copy on that site except for 1-2 paragraphs. Now, I have never considered my writing out-of-reach, but the site scored my readability at "advanced/doctoral level." I was shocked! Apparently, you need a Ph.D. to understand what I'm trying to say! There is just no way. I mean, I use exclamation points for goodness' sake.

On the one hand, this may be a good thing because our target market would likely have advanced degrees. On the other hand, text should be approachable when you're trying to generate leads. I started thinking about it and realized one thing; the site we went to for this free score is a marketing company trying to get business. They would want us to think our site is the least reachable site on the internet. Don't get me wrong, but the info has to be taken with a grain of salt.

After some research, it turns out there are scales for readability accessible in Microsoft Word as you type and, of course, all over the internet. (I'm always interested to learn new features in word because I actually have a pretty advanced understanding of the program.) According to the Flesch-Kincaid scale, a senior in high school can understand the same text that marketing site deemed appropriate for those with doctoral degrees.

Going back to my earlier point...

To be honest, I am less concerned with the score my copy got and more excited that I learned new things. In general, I've felt like my mind became almost stagnant after graduating college. I was a gifted child, but I felt like that didn't translate into adulthood. I was still smart. I just didn't feel exceptional anymore. I was starting to feel average, for lack of a better word. Look, I'm still no genius, but at least I feel like I'm growing again. The more I learn, the better I get at learning. I'm a sponge again, sucking up every drop of information I can get my hands on. My mind is active, ideas are flowing and I feel my potential. I'm getting better at disciplining myself, staying efficient and making time to write.

I got a jump-start. I have the drive. Now I get to see how far I go.