I got an email from our Temple President this morning asking for my help “to assist a task discreetly” and asking me to reply by email because he was in a meeting. I wondered why he’d sent it to my Board address instead of my personal address, but I replied saying “sure, what’s up?”

Moments later, I got a request to “purchase 5 $100 Apple gift cards at any nearby store and I’ll reimburse you”.

Needless to say, I didn’t buy any gift cards.

If I’d been paying closer attention, I’d’ve seen this when I started writing the reply:

  | On Aug 19, 2021 at 9:58:22 AM, President’s Name <randomstring@gmail.com> wrote:

randomstring@gmail.com is not the president’s email address, of course.

The scammer hit all of the published board mailing addresses this morning; I don’t know if I was the only one to start down the rabbit hole, but the Executive Director did send out a warning a few minutes later.

Speaking of scams and scammers, Diane and I filled out our California Recall ballots and put them in an official dropbox this morning. I’m proud to display my “I Voted” badge!

When we booked our Antarctic wine club adventure for this winter (summer there, of course), we were hopeful – we were fully vaccinated, vaccines were becoming more available, and the trends were good. We were so confident we paid for the full trip in advance to take advantage of a 10% discount.

That was then.

This week was the deadline to cancel with a full refund; after that, if we canceled, the cruise line would still refund most of our money but they’d keep a significant chunk that we could only use as a credit on one of their sailings during 2022.

We searched our souls. We checked the relevant thread on Cruise Critic. We looked at the progress of vaccination in Argentina and Chile. We looked at Seabourn’s options for next year. We thought some more.

And we decided that discretion was the better part of valor – we want to go to Antarctica, but we want to be able to fully enjoy the experience without worrying about the trip being canceled at the last second. And we want to enjoy the trip, including the cities we fly to – and this year, that didn’t seem likely.

So we called our travel agent and canceled.

At least we got to see penguins in Boston last week!