Erin's Journals

Part of the reason we were on the mainland last week was to help my sister Cindy in Summerland, BC as she prepares for a huge garage/yard/driveway sale this weekend. But it was ads for larger ticket items, like a piano, on sites like Kijiji and Used Kelowna that made me aware of a scam so sophisticated that it took an online search to figure out just what the crooks’ game is. Here’s how it works. 
 
Cindy gets an email or text that looks like this – awful grammar and all:  

Thanks for your mail back, I am ready to make a quick purchase, kindly consider it sold and cancel every other appointment regarding it, please get back to me with your final asking price, sorry I won’t be available to come do cash and carry, anyway distance is not an issue, I will be responsible for the pickup agent money and every other charges attached to it, kindly send me your PayPal email address and your full name so I can proceed on making the payment transfer to you… Thanks

By the time the fourth or fifth such response came in, Cindy was familiar with the scam. One of them claimed to want to buy the beautiful Yamaha Clavinova for a co-worker as a surprise. (Some co-worker, huh?) Another responded to Cindy when she said she wouldn’t do PayPal with a very aggressive push for her to use the system, along with a link to sign up. Ah, but that link, had she followed it, would have taken her to a fake site that would have then taken and used her financial information, had she given it. So, again, she didn’t go there.
 
The other two scams at work here – such as the one alluded to in the response above – are outlined on a site I found. Read how this rip-off works according to consumer.ftc.gov in the US. 

Scenario Two: “Check your email!” The buyer claims he has sent payment to your PayPal account with additional funds so you can ship the merchandise ASAP, but oops, he sent too much money. He asks you to return the extra money via a money wiring service. It’s all a lie, including the extra money the buyer says he included.
 
What should you do? Log into your PayPal account. Make sure you’ve been paid before you ship. Never follow links in emails from people you don’t know. The safest approach is to open a browser window, navigate to PayPal.com, and log in yourself. Also, if the buyer claims to have sent extra money, and asks for some back, that’s a big red flag.
 
Scenario Three: The buyer sends you real money through a real PayPal account, and you ship him the car. Problem is, the PayPal account belongs to someone else! You might need to return the money even though the scammer has your wheels.

…or in Cindy’s case, the piano. The first red flag is the bad grammar and spelling, as is so often the case when someone is trying to fleece you, whether it’s to send money to a Nigerian prince or pretending to know you for some other nefarious reason.
 
This one was new to us (although the info above was posted in 2014). I thought I’d share it with you as something to be aware of if you (or anyone you know) are trying to sell something online. The old “too good to be true” line just screams out the truth, doesn’t it? Pass this one on today – the final day of Scams Awareness Month. (True!) 
 

Well, after the drama of the last two days’ journals, I thought today I’d share with you an actual scripted comedy that we took in last week. And do you know what? I did something I don’t think I have ever done since getting into radio thirty-some years ago: I saw a film without reading one single review beforehand. 
 
We saw a trailer for Book Club last winter when we went to Phantom Thread. Thread was the last film we saw before the Oscars – last big screen movie, period, actually – and I was dying, not only for some theatre popcorn, but to see a movie that is not all CGI and superheroes (as good as those are, I know). 
 
When our pals Nancy and Charles from nearby Sidney suggested a matinee in the tiny town, we said, “Sure!” and off we went. What a surprise on a sunny and 17 C day to find the theatre packed! I guess word had travelled that it was a lighthearted comedy and we weren’t the only ones looking for just that kind of movie.
 
In case you haven’t heard of it, Book Club stars four well-known comedic actresses, all north of 60 years in age. Jane Fonda, Candice Bergen, Mary Steenburgen and Diane Keaton portray a group of friends who are (with one exception) single. One is a serial dater who won’t commit, one is married to her high-profile job and never goes out after a failed marriage years earlier, another is a widow of just one year, while the fourth is in a stale thirty-year union.
 
When the spiciest of these girls (Fonda) chooses the Fifty Shades series for the next book club selection, all of a sudden, eyes are opened and imaginations are sparked. Bow-chicka-wow-wow…
 

 

 
There were plenty of laughs during the film (one especially saucy sequence is due to the uprising that occurs when a wife spikes hubby’s beer with Viagra) but there are moments of tenderness too. Four terrifically entertaining actresses (plus Don Johnson, Ed Begley Jr., Andy Garcia and Richard Dreyfuss as various partners to this dynamic quartet) more than deliver on a witty script.
 
It’s sassy, wine-soaked and just a fun movie with a great soundtrack – from Tom Petty, Bob Dylan and Paul Simon to Meghan Trainor and Katherine McPhee. You know, sometimes a bit of fun is all you need. After all, Phantom Thread gave me enough angst to last for months. Don’t expect to see The Book Club at the Oscars next year (unless the Carole Bayer-Sager co-written closing theme is nominated) but that’s why it was a summer release. 
 
And okay – I just looked up a review. On EW.com, Entertainment Weekly gives it a B and calls it: “Salty and silly and still crazy, after all these years.” I couldn’t agree more. Like a good book, this movie is just hard to put down.
 
Tomorrow: a huge PayPal scam hits home for one of my sisters.
 

Let’s catch you up on yesterday’s journal: I had just been announced to the stage at the Monteo Resort in gorgeous Kelowna BC. I was delivering my keynote address called “Transformation: When You’re Strong Because You Have No Choice” to a freshly caffeinated group of BC Broadcasters – radio and television.
 
It was about one minute before that introduction that I asked Rob for my iPad, to which I would refer while traversing the stage for the next half hour. I needed that device, or a script of some kind, as there were some 90 pictures that had been choreographed to go with the speech. So I didn’t want to miss cueing Rob. But he’d just realized we had left the iPad in the room. So what was I to do? 
 
Without a word of a lie, I spoke for ten (or was it 12?) minutes – walking, talking, just filling – telling everyone about the early years of my career, why Kelowna is special to my family…and so on. 
 
And on. 
 
I kept joking about divorce and awaiting that iPad. It occurred to me to think, Just be real. They’ll understand that things happen and something has happened. Don’t try to pretend that everything is just fine. Be yourself. I can tell you about those thoughts because it was an out-of-body experience: one I’ve had before – in my dreams. This is the nightmare a public speaker has: you’re in front of an audience and have no prepared notes.
 
Now, people seemed to be on my side, very kindly listening in a friendly way, but I knew that I was finally running out of things to talk about. After all, I couldn’t give away any of the elements of my speech! Just as my former boss, Julie Adam, spoke up and helpfully offered, “Hey, why not call for a two minute break?” – a wonderful idea – Rob burst into the room. To a warm round of applause, he came to the stage, got on bended knee and handed me the iPad. I laughed, took a sip of water and began.
 
On with the show.
 
It wasn’t until afterwards that I learned the confluence of mess-ups that had to happen to make my “work nightmare” come true. 
 
1. The iPad: 
It was only the second time I’d used the iPad instead of a print script. I’d always worried about the possibility of problems when relying on a tablet, but after the success we had with the speech in Ottawa just a month ago, it didn’t even occur to me to have a printed paper version. That will change. All of that. And if you wonder why I need a script when it’s our life story, it’s because, with that number of pictures, there are cues to hit. And I had to get every single one right!
 
2. The hotel elevator:
Just one elevator. And a slow one. So Rob decided to run up the stairs outside the hotel from the pool area on up to the third floor. 
 
3. The room key:
When he arrived at our floor, the key wouldn’t open the door from the outside staircase to the hallway. He ran back down those three flights, ran to the front desk and asked where the other outside stairs were. They pointed to the opposite end of the hotel and off he ran.
 
He took the stairs up two at a time, arriving at the third floor, only to find that the key card receptacle once again flashed red. It was not opening the door from outside to the hall where our room was!
 
Rob ran back down to the hotel lobby – three flights of stairs and a long hall – and waited impatiently until the elevator finally took him to our floor. 
 
He ran to room 314, put in his door card and the door would not open; the key card had been deactivated that morning. It was 8:30 am, by the way, and there is no way that that should have happened; we definitely had not checked out!
 
Rob took the elevator back down to the lobby and begged the woman to reactivate the card. Like Mrs. Wiggins in the Carol Burnett/Mr. Tudball skit, she took her time. She had to ask someone. Rob said, out of breath, that he didn’t want to be rude, but his wife was waiting for the iPad she needed to make a speech. Still…slower than molasses in January, as my mom used to say. Much slower. And finally he got the card, took the elevator and grabbed the iPad. And it made its way to me.
 
We caught the entire misadventure on tape (Rob had set up a camera, as I wanted a tape of my speech to show the folks at a speakers’ agency). I don’t know if I can ever watch it, but for the rest of my days, I’ll remember that ten or 12 minutes. Talking to the fifty broadcasters in the room, laughing, trying to fill – something we all have had to do in radio at some time in our lives, but obviously the stuff that nightmares are made of as well – and thinking how I could have done things differently.
 
It started with feeling so empty-handed when I left the hotel room. And ended up with me learning a lot of lessons I will never forget. Maybe one of them is that I should go ahead and research and write that book about work nightmares. 
 
The other is this: not having a prepared speech in my hand is not the worst thing that has happened to me or to Rob. The content of the speech is about that actual “worst thing.” All the rest? Perspective. Talk to you here tomorrow.
 

I hope you’ve had a good weekend and thank you for coming back after our short hiatus from this journal. I had a lot of things to do from a writing perspective (including hitting a book deadline this coming Wednesday) and I just decided to reorganize my head a little bit. So, thank you for understanding.
 
We’re home safe and sound after our Washington/BC road trip and it ended much more uneventfully than the one day in the middle of it, around which we’d planned the entire trip to begin with!
 
It was a week ago Thursday, on May 17th. I was to begin the day’s speeches/panels etc. at the BC Association of Broadcasters’ gathering in beautiful Kelowna, where I’d also had some great visiting time with my sisters and dad. Just perfect, right? Well…it should have been. Today’s journal is a story you’ll want to take in, in its entirety, but it would make for a doubly long audio and written blog. So I’m going to break it into two parts. 
 
After tweaking my “Transformation: When You’re Strong Because You Have No Choice” speech, rehearsing it twice with its 90-some photos and making sure that everything was just so, we went to bed Wednesday, tired but confident. Neither of us could get to sleep right away with so many details going through our heads and a 6:45 am alarm looming, even though we knew what we were doing! The 30-to-45-minute address was all going to go perfectly, just as it had for the Canadian Real Estate Association in Ottawa last month.
 
At 8:00 am, Rob left the room to set up for the technical end of things. I put on my dress, having gotten up early to put in contacts, glue on some lashes and shimmy into my Spanx. 
 
I was to join him at 8:15. But as I left the room I had a quick thought: Gee, it’s weird not carrying my purse or my clipboard or binder, but how nice to have a speech in the hotel we’re staying in!
 
I got to the elevator and just then noticed Rob had texted: “Bring your laptop.” Oh, I thought, that’s strange: he never forgets anything. I went back to the room, retrieved my trusty MacBook Air and got to the solo elevator before it had even arrived. It was that slow.
 
Rob met me in the ballroom and thanked me; he couldn’t believe he didn’t have the computer he needed to follow my speech so he could hit the slides at the right times! Huh. So not like him.
 
As the woman introducing me took to the podium, I walked over to the sound board at the side of the room and said to Rob, “I’m going to need my iPad.” You see, I hold the iPad, use a clip-on lav mic or a headset microphone and, that way, can walk the stage and gesticulate freely. I thought that moving away from the podium was a big step into my public speaking life and I had already done it once with some success.
 
As I asked for the iPad, Rob looked at me like my hair was on fire. (If it had been, I’d have had an excuse to run…) “You don’t have it?” I shook my head. He dashed to his backpack to check; it wasn’t there. A look of panic appeared on his face and quickly spread to mine.
 
“I’ve got to go to the room!” he said, and he was gone. Suddenly, a wave of calm swept over me. Well, this isn’t good, but it will be a challenge.
 

 
At just about the moment he disappeared through the ballroom door, the introduction wrapped up and I heard my name. I made my way to the stage and what happened? I’ll tell you here tomorrow. There are just too many layers to this story to rush through, so – as they used to say – stay tuned! 
 

First of all, I want to wish you a very happy Victoria Day Weekend and a welcome to the unofficial kickoff of summer! Here in the Okanagan, where it’s been in the upper 20s and low 30s, we’ve already had more than our share, so, fill your boots!
 
How appropriate that so many are going to be watching the wedding of a descendant of Queen Victoria herself, adding yet another branch to the family tree. I hope that all goes well tomorrow; we’ll be watching, but out here in BC it’ll be stupid-o’clock, so my sister Cindy will tape it and we’ll sip English Breakfast tea and perhaps enjoy a few crumpets. Sounds good, yes? And please, no spoilers! LOL Fun to hear that CHFI and a few other Rogers joints have gone to the UK to take in the celebrations. Shades of what we did with Will and Kate and that was SO much fun!
 
Funnily enough, tomorrow marks a bit of a Victorian anniversary in our lives, too: it was 40 years ago that, as a teen, I first set eyes on the provincial capital that has become our home! My eldest sister Heather was in the Canadian Armed Forces, posted in Esquimalt, a part of the greater Victoria area. She held her wedding there; my Dad gave the first of a total of eight Father of the Bride speeches he would go on to make for his four daughters over his lifetime. Of course, he’s still with us, but I think we’re all done marching down any aisles!
 
Here we are on a walk of a different kind near his home in Kelowna on Wednesday.
 

 
Anyway, Heather would joke that Victoria was for the “newlywed and nearly dead” but we’re told that “flower beds” has joined that quaint saying. We are familiar with none of those three, but we are so grateful to live in what we consider to be the most beautiful place we’ve ever had our mail delivered.
 
Despite my sisters’ seven weddings (I had just the one – slacker!), I was never a bridesmaid. But I did get to sing at Heather’s first: it was John Denver’s “You Fill Up My Senses” (or as Heather calls it, “You Filled Out My Census”). Sisters Heather, Cindy and Leslie now live in the Kelowna area and so does Dad. Funny how we all ended up in this province when none of us was born here, but having spent so much time in Alberta as kids, and having been born in Edmonton, any place with mountains has always called me to come home. And here we are.
 
It’s impossible to believe that those nuptials happened 40 years ago tomorrow, but let’s hope that Harry and Meghan manage to stay together and, in four decades’ time, mark this anniversary. I doubt I’ll be around to see it, especially if what happened to us yesterday ever goes down again. 
 
I hope you’ve enjoyed the pictures and journals this week; I’m going to take the short week off from writing next week, so I can concentrate on family and give Rob a break from the technical end of things. But be sure to return on the 28th: I have one heck of a story to share with you. It’s that “professional nightmare” theme I’ve talked about; it happened to us yesterday and it was entirely our doing. Talk to you then – you won’t want to miss it. And enjoy the Victoria Day weekend!