Another side effect of a bad economy

One of my biggest worries when there are talks of a bad economy is crime. I remember when my local economy at-the-time was tanking one year during the Christmas holidays (still trying to remember which year that was-- maybe 1999 or 2000), and people were experiencing an increase in break-ins and thiefs were stealing wrapped Christmas presents. An economy where people are losing their jobs means that they are going to look for an alternative way to feed their kids and continue their own survival mode.

Yesterday I felt like the state of the economy was slapping me in the face. Because of a really busy work schedule over the long weekend, I decided to sleep in on Tuesday morning and skip my morning workout. Instead, I was awakened by my cell phone ringing. Thinking it was a client, I answered. It wasn't a client, but the fraud department at my credit card company. Someone had spent a lot of time on iTunes over the weekend with my credit card! The card company eventually started declining the charges on my card, but there were still many of them.

I verified that those weren't my charges, had the card cancelled, and verified my mailing address for the new one. Great. I hung up the phone feeling annoyed, but grateful that it had been detected so early and that they were calling me without me having to call them.

So, I continue on with my whirlwind day and head to the office, then to where I'm working, only to discover that we had had a break-in there over the weekend. No problem-- the right people were on it. Still annoying.

The kicker was when I got home to go for a bike ride. I drove into my nice, secure garage, wound around to my assigned parking space past nice cars and bikes, only to discover that my BIKE had been stolen! At this point, I'm furious. And annoyed. And feeling violated.

It's going to take me a while to snap out of this. I'm normally an optimist, but at this point I'm really tempted to hole-up at home with my cat and keep watch over my domain and my safety.

Sheesh....