Post Race!

I'll stay here for a year or two, due to recreational options. I doubt I'll stay longer than that.

I might have got scammed out of some personal info today. Thought it was my insurance company calling and I verified my ID with my date of birth and zip. Then I got suspicious and hung up.

That's not real private stuff but it bothers me.

When someone calls and asks for me to confirm information, I tell them that I will not do it, but I have no problem calling them to confirm. 9 times out of 10, if it is legit then they will walk me through the process of getting in touch with the right person.

I usually don't even answer these calls but I just so happen to be changing insurances and thought it might be important.

This one was automated so there wasn't anyone to call back. I thought after the verification I would get a representative. But it asked me to take a survey. That's when I hung up.

Scammers are always looking for clever new approaches.

I guess I'll just have to wait and see if they can use that info some how.

Only two times (that I know of) has anyone tried to scam me. The first scammer tried the Nigerian prince thing, but it was dropped into my physical mailbox, but it didn't have the obvious German postal stamp to show it went through the German post. Other people in our village also recieved this letter around the same time. It started shortly after we acquired new neighbors, who then hightailed out of town right before the police started looking for them.

The second time, a fake Windows support person called my house, said my system contacted Microsoft to report a trojan, so they wanted to assist me in removing it, but I had to install software so they could remotely clean my system. When my son asked who was on the phone, I said "I don't know Lieutenant", and they hunged up.

The first time somebody tried to spam me, it was fried. Not my favorite, but edible.

Fried spam sandwiches, yum. Not health but very tasty.

Not my favorite.

Ham should not be spiced.

I'm doing a Dr. Pepper ham for Thanksgiving.

My daughter loves it, though it's a gigantic pain in the rear to make.

Speaking of, I should probably take out my turkey.

Rephrased because that sounds a bit dirty: I should probably take the turkey out of the freezer.

Yeah, it usually takes@ 4 days for a turkey to thaw in the frig.

I'm going to grill rib eyes for Thanksgiving.

I'm going all out with the proteins this year. I'm deep frying a turkey, making shrimp jambalaya, a chicken and sausage gumbo, smoking a Cajun sausage called ponce (think trinity, dark roux, sweet potato, and spicy pork cooked in a pig's stomach), a Dr. Pepper ham, and carrots and ground meat. Just about the only thing I don't have is steaks.

Sounds very Cajun. Also sounds like a tremendous amount of work for one person. Hope you have help.

Smart not to do steaks, the price of beef is crazy. I ended up buying a prime rib and cutting it into steaks. The precut steaks were all to thin for grilling.

I plan on doing some of the cooking the night before and then reheating during the day (like the ham and gumbo). The shrimp jambalaya won't be difficult, I can get it ready and just have my wife watch over it, and the ponce is just throwing it in the oven. Really the only thing the day of that I'll really need to pay close attention to is the turkey. It's the first time I'm deep frying one and I'm a bit nervous about it because the largest thing I've deep fried has been fish (and those are usually thin).

I think what actually going to take the most time is going to be the sides and my wife said that she'll be handling most of that