“May I help you?” The young hotel receptionist looked up as Keith and I stepped to the front desk. “Yes, we’re passing through and wondered if you have a room for the night,” I said. “We don’t have a reservation.” “There’re only a few rooms left,” she said. “How much for the least expensive?” She quoted a price. I turned to Keith. “Sounds OK,” he said, “we’ll take it.” I gave the receptionist my credit card, signed the agreement, initialed the section about a $500 fee for smoking in a non-smoking room, and picked up the passkeys. When we entered the room, Keith and I noted the faint smell of cigarette smoke. I wondered if this was a scam, a hoax, a fraud, swindle, or deception to get that five-hundred dollars out of us. We got ready for bed, tired after a long day of driving. Keith fell asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow, but I took longer to settle. The air conditioner hummed, coughed, whoosh-whooshed and thump-thumped then hummed. OK, maybe I can fold that clatter into sleep. Several minutes passed. “Chirp!” I opened my eyes and saw the smoke alarm’s green light blink red. “You have GOT to be kidding,” I said, waking Keith. “Chirp!” I leaped up and turned on a light. Keith rolled out of bed wearing only his t-shirt. “Bring that chair over here next to the bar refrigerator. I’ll see if I can reach the reset button.” He stepped from chair to refrigerator while I looked up, admiring the view. “That might do it,” he said as he climbed down. We settled into bed again. “Chirp!” “I’ll go to the Front Desk,” Keith said. “No, I’ll do it; I signed the agreement.” I pulled on yoga pants, slipped on sandals, clasped a jacket over my Cats nightshirt, then grabbed one of the passkeys and headed to the Lobby. “May I help you?” “Yes. There seem to be problems with our room. It smells like cigarette smoke, the air conditioning whooshes and thumps intermittently and…” “Would you write down everything that’s wrong with your room? I’ll try to find you another.” The receptionist handed me a pad of paper and a pen. “The smoke alarm is chirping and keeping us awake. It probably needs a new battery.” “I’ll have it checked in the morning. There’s only the King Suite available. Here are the passkeys. I apologize for your inconvenience.” Keith and I gathered our stuff and moved to the new room. The King Suite’s door opened to a King-sized Jacuzzi. As we snuggled into bed yet again, I giggled. In my mind’s eye, I saw Keith standing in his t-shirt on the bar refrigerator next to King-sized Jacuzzi across the room. No hoax, only sweet dreams of that view.
The first time I was alone in my house in Spain, I locked myself out and my front door had to be cracked open. A few weeks ago, it wasn't me who was locked out, but my cell phone was locked. I entered the wrong PIN several times and needed the PUK to unlock it. I had no way to contact anyone. But I really needed to reach my partner. I had no choice but to go to my neighbors, an elderly couple who speak only the village dialect. I tried to explain my problem to the "vecina" in Spanish. She came back with a charger. After another attempt, she then handed me her cell phone. This proved to be difficult, however, because Mike kept pushing me away. He thought it was another scam call, as such as well as fake messages, hoaxes etc. had been accumulating for some time. I decided to do some "phone terror" and call him every 30 seconds, so that he would eventually become skeptical and see that it was a Spanish number. Then after a while he tried to reach me on my cell phone and realized that something was wrong. He was concerned, his first thought was that I had a car accident or something happened to me. The neighbor's phone rang 15 minutes later and it was Mike.
Whether the neighbor knew by now what my problem was, I don't know. Anyway, I sat with the neighbors until midnight and we talked about God and the world.
Big cat sightings in the UK aren’t that rare. There have been paw prints, mauled sheep, barking dogs. Evidence. There was one recently that hit the headlines. Someone sent in a photo – a shadow in the grass.
From 1917 right up until the 1970s, Harrods sold exotic pets including lions and leopards (confirmed by news stories of the time) and panthers and tigers (confirmed by dubious clickbait articles of today).
I can easily imagine young models and artists in Swinging Sixties’ London, bundling their now too-big and too-wild cat into the back of their car, then driving to the countryside to release it.
I know somebody who has seen one – my cousin’s uncle (unrelated to me and actually unrelated to them too, because he is their mum’s best friend’s husband), who lives in an area where there are lots of sightings. He told me the story himself. He was looking out over a field at the back of their cottage and saw a massive housecat. He said for a moment he couldn’t work out what he was looking at; the perspective of this nearby cat was so odd. Then he realised – it wasn’t a normal cat nearby. It was a big cat, far away.
This story has now been spoilt for me. Because my cousins’ mum’s best friend’s (now ex) husband became obsessed with QAnon over Covid. So strange, that a man in a little cottage in England would get involved in a conspiracy theory spreading around the States and blow his entire life up because of it.
I like to think of all the big cats out there, living in the shadows, staying away from humans except for stealing the occasionally tasty sheep. But I wonder if the whole thing has always been a hoax.
Everyone was getting rich so I figured I could, too. It was late ’99, a few months before the NASDAQ Composite would crash, the first “tech bubble” declared popped. I was a risk-taking, money-making, 20-year-old, ploughing my extra wages from a Disney On Ice job into high-risk tech stocks. I had set up an ETRADE account to trade equities without the use of a broker, a new technology recently made available by the internet. Sky-high valuations of companies who had no profits or historical record should have qualified as a hoax on investors but that’s not how Wall Street works. Regulators are captured, hoaxes with phony numbers are the name of the game, packaged and delivered as sound investments to retail buyers. They thrived off suckers like me, caught up in the greed of the moment, desperate to get rich quick. That March of 2000, I learned various lessons about financial markets the hard way. Expensive, real-life, hands-on experience. I internalized those losses, determined to take better care of my emotions. The realizations would eventually lead to the life I live today, far from the get-rich-quick schemes of my youth. Now I enjoy the slow, methodical approach to living. A healthy skepticism to steer clear of strategic wrongs. For all this, I have the wolves of Wall Street to thank.
“May I help you?” The young hotel receptionist looked up as Keith and I stepped to the front desk. “Yes, we’re passing through and wondered if you have a room for the night,” I said. “We don’t have a reservation.” “There’re only a few rooms left,” she said. “How much for the least expensive?” She quoted a price. I turned to Keith. “Sounds OK,” he said, “we’ll take it.” I gave the receptionist my credit card, signed the agreement, initialed the section about a $500 fee for smoking in a non-smoking room, and picked up the passkeys. When we entered the room, Keith and I noted the faint smell of cigarette smoke. I wondered if this was a scam, a hoax, a fraud, swindle, or deception to get that five-hundred dollars out of us. We got ready for bed, tired after a long day of driving. Keith fell asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow, but I took longer to settle. The air conditioner hummed, coughed, whoosh-whooshed and thump-thumped then hummed. OK, maybe I can fold that clatter into sleep. Several minutes passed. “Chirp!” I opened my eyes and saw the smoke alarm’s green light blink red. “You have GOT to be kidding,” I said, waking Keith. “Chirp!” I leaped up and turned on a light. Keith rolled out of bed wearing only his t-shirt. “Bring that chair over here next to the bar refrigerator. I’ll see if I can reach the reset button.” He stepped from chair to refrigerator while I looked up, admiring the view. “That might do it,” he said as he climbed down. We settled into bed again. “Chirp!” “I’ll go to the Front Desk,” Keith said. “No, I’ll do it; I signed the agreement.” I pulled on yoga pants, slipped on sandals, clasped a jacket over my Cats nightshirt, then grabbed one of the passkeys and headed to the Lobby. “May I help you?” “Yes. There seem to be problems with our room. It smells like cigarette smoke, the air conditioning whooshes and thumps intermittently and…” “Would you write down everything that’s wrong with your room? I’ll try to find you another.” The receptionist handed me a pad of paper and a pen. “The smoke alarm is chirping and keeping us awake. It probably needs a new battery.” “I’ll have it checked in the morning. There’s only the King Suite available. Here are the passkeys. I apologize for your inconvenience.” Keith and I gathered our stuff and moved to the new room. The King Suite’s door opened to a King-sized Jacuzzi. As we snuggled into bed yet again, I giggled. In my mind’s eye, I saw Keith standing in his t-shirt on the bar refrigerator next to King-sized Jacuzzi across the room. No hoax, only sweet dreams of that view.
The first time I was alone in my house in Spain, I locked myself out and my front door had to be cracked open. A few weeks ago, it wasn't me who was locked out, but my cell phone was locked. I entered the wrong PIN several times and needed the PUK to unlock it. I had no way to contact anyone. But I really needed to reach my partner. I had no choice but to go to my neighbors, an elderly couple who speak only the village dialect. I tried to explain my problem to the "vecina" in Spanish. She came back with a charger. After another attempt, she then handed me her cell phone. This proved to be difficult, however, because Mike kept pushing me away. He thought it was another scam call, as such as well as fake messages, hoaxes etc. had been accumulating for some time. I decided to do some "phone terror" and call him every 30 seconds, so that he would eventually become skeptical and see that it was a Spanish number. Then after a while he tried to reach me on my cell phone and realized that something was wrong. He was concerned, his first thought was that I had a car accident or something happened to me. The neighbor's phone rang 15 minutes later and it was Mike.
Whether the neighbor knew by now what my problem was, I don't know. Anyway, I sat with the neighbors until midnight and we talked about God and the world.
Big cat sightings in the UK aren’t that rare. There have been paw prints, mauled sheep, barking dogs. Evidence. There was one recently that hit the headlines. Someone sent in a photo – a shadow in the grass.
From 1917 right up until the 1970s, Harrods sold exotic pets including lions and leopards (confirmed by news stories of the time) and panthers and tigers (confirmed by dubious clickbait articles of today).
I can easily imagine young models and artists in Swinging Sixties’ London, bundling their now too-big and too-wild cat into the back of their car, then driving to the countryside to release it.
I know somebody who has seen one – my cousin’s uncle (unrelated to me and actually unrelated to them too, because he is their mum’s best friend’s husband), who lives in an area where there are lots of sightings. He told me the story himself. He was looking out over a field at the back of their cottage and saw a massive housecat. He said for a moment he couldn’t work out what he was looking at; the perspective of this nearby cat was so odd. Then he realised – it wasn’t a normal cat nearby. It was a big cat, far away.
This story has now been spoilt for me. Because my cousins’ mum’s best friend’s (now ex) husband became obsessed with QAnon over Covid. So strange, that a man in a little cottage in England would get involved in a conspiracy theory spreading around the States and blow his entire life up because of it.
I like to think of all the big cats out there, living in the shadows, staying away from humans except for stealing the occasionally tasty sheep. But I wonder if the whole thing has always been a hoax.
Everyone was getting rich so I figured I could, too. It was late ’99, a few months before the NASDAQ Composite would crash, the first “tech bubble” declared popped. I was a risk-taking, money-making, 20-year-old, ploughing my extra wages from a Disney On Ice job into high-risk tech stocks. I had set up an ETRADE account to trade equities without the use of a broker, a new technology recently made available by the internet. Sky-high valuations of companies who had no profits or historical record should have qualified as a hoax on investors but that’s not how Wall Street works. Regulators are captured, hoaxes with phony numbers are the name of the game, packaged and delivered as sound investments to retail buyers. They thrived off suckers like me, caught up in the greed of the moment, desperate to get rich quick. That March of 2000, I learned various lessons about financial markets the hard way. Expensive, real-life, hands-on experience. I internalized those losses, determined to take better care of my emotions. The realizations would eventually lead to the life I live today, far from the get-rich-quick schemes of my youth. Now I enjoy the slow, methodical approach to living. A healthy skepticism to steer clear of strategic wrongs. For all this, I have the wolves of Wall Street to thank.