Witching Hour?

As I write, I am sitting in the dark with rain lashing outside my window and thunder bellowing.

"And the rain is brain-coloured.

And the thunder sounds like something remembering something." STAN RICE

Reaching page 106 of 'The Witching Hour' by Anne Rice, the only thing making me put this fantastic book down is the size of the text, so small I am straining my eyes to read, which is spoiling the reading experience. So, I went on a hunt to find this book in a larger print version (hardback or Kindle).

Starting my hunt at Amazon, as I invariably do, I was disappointed to find there was no Kindle version. Clicking the link to tell the publisher you'd like to read this book on Kindle, I took a cyber-stroll down to Ebay.

Before I continue, which is unfortunately always inevitable, I feel it important to affirm my open mindedness. Rarely judging people by the expressed opinions of others, I prefer to make my own judgements based on my experiences, which often earns me the 'I think you are mad, but I'm not going to say it, because mad people are unpredictable.' look from people.

My Ebay search turned out to be much more interesting than I had expected...

There were several different formats of The Witching Hour, but shortly after browsing the search results, I had forgotten that I was there to find a book. I had been distracted by these:

Having spent many of my teenage years being bitter and cross, ready to take revenge on the world, I am now surprisingly calm and understanding, believing that "everything happens for a reason" and "when one door closes another one opens." So I find it hard to empathise with anyone who would buy a spell for breaking up a marriage or make someone obsess over them. Why would you want someone to fall in love with you, knowing they didn't really love you? It makes me sad that people are desperate enough to want to do it.

Curious, I wondered what sort of feedback buyers left; whether they were happy or disatisfied with their purchases. After reading these, I really wasn't convinced.

I am more inclined to believe the results are from a change in the buyer's thinking- i.e. If you have taken action, you feel more positive about it.

But, assuming for a moment that it did work, I considered what spell I would buy...

This one is tempting...

and as a Twilight & True Blood fan, I quite fancy trying this one...

possibly combined with this one...

(if you are an Eric fan, you will appreciate this!)

But I finally decided, after wasting spending some time deliberating, that this one would be the best one for me...

I won't be trying any spells. The control freak in me says no to anything I don't understand (including politics and blue food), but before I had finished on Ebay I was yet again distracted by the sponsored links...

A Bad Day...

The last Friday 13th I wrote a post on a crazy superstition I had read about on the internet. Although I still have no time for such silly superstitions, after my Friday 13th experience yesterday, I am beginning to wonder whether there is something unlucky about that day.

After taking Little Z to school (dressed as a gnome - that's another story!) and Big J to nursery, I dropped off a birthday present at a friend's house and came straight home. The first thing I usually do when I get home (when I am not working) is check my emails. My email box is often full of junk sent by people who think am I interested in increasing the size of my manhood(?) or that I am desperate for a cheap supply of viagra(??).

However, the email which caught my attention was the one from PayPal telling me that my payment of $220 had been made for some photography equipment. Nothing unusual about that, I suppose, apart from the fact that I have not bought any photographic equipment and had not authorised a payment through PayPal.

I then noticed another email from PayPal telling me that the seller had issued me with a full refund. That's okay then. I guess I could consider myself lucky that I was getting the money back. Couldn't I?

The problem though, is that debits go out almost immediately, whereas refunds take several days, so the money is going to debit my account on Monday and the refund is unlikely to reach my account until Wednesday, which would not be a problem if the account had fund in or an overdraft facility, but, as it is not my main account, it has neither. So, I called the bank and spoke to seven different people who between the told me that because this was not my main account and it has no turnover they were not prepared to arrange a temporary overdraft facility for £40 (which was all I needed) for 2 weeks. They also told me they could not stop the payment going out as it had been authorised already, they told me they would not waive the unauthorised excess fee and that PayPal needed to contact them to stop the payment going through.

I had already phoned PayPal who had been very helpful and given me immediate instruction on how to flag the unauthorised transaction to them and how to change my passwords and what precautionary measures to take etc.. They had said that the banks would usually waive any fee once they knew it was unauthorised. They had asked me to contact the bank to let them know PayPal were investigating it and said they would get back to me within a few days.

So, after being passed around at the bank and explaining my situation to seven different people and explaining that PayPal were not going to stop the transaction as they needed to investigate it first and by the time they had done that the money would have come out already and in addition to this, the money was already on its way back because the person who had received the money had realised it was not his and had refunded it (breathe!), I got through to someone who actually listened to what I was saying and agreed that under the circumstances I would not have to pay an unauthorised overdraft fee unless I made another withdrawal which took me overdrawn. Finally!

I completed all the necessary online forms for PayPal and changed my passwords etc. so having spent all morning sorting this out, I then spent most of the afternoon downloading anti-spyware software and running deep scans on my computer. There was nothing there, but I am now quite confident that I have even better protection against anyone trying to obtain my personal details.

Oh Well. All's well that ends well! Or is it???.....