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I had a couple unrelated financial misadventures this last week. First of all, I had a not-too-uncommon screw-up by the Verified by Visa system while trying to make a purchase online. It almost ended with a hold on my account, but after I cleared that up, it ended with Visa calling to verify my charges. There was a $1 charge I knew nothing about. I know some vendors, for reasons unknown to me, will do this, then refund the charge, but there was no notice this was being done in this case, so I told the computer calling that I hadn't authorized it. I've been told credit brokers penalize their merchants for things like this, so hopefully Skype will take notice (if it was them).

The second was more fun. The unemployment office told me my income for 2009 was enough that I needed to apply for a new claim. They also said since I hadn't properly reported the income, I might also have several months worth of UI benefits I would have to pay back. My response was, "What income?" Apparently at the end of the year, they compared the income I'd declared when applying for benefits to the income declared to the IRS for my social security number and found a substantial mismatch. To make a long story short, I suspect an illegal immigrant in Washington picked a social security number to use at random and ended up with mine. Fortunately, it sounds like this will get properly cleared up on my end.

As has been a little too common lately, I spent part of the weekend helping Kerry's parents with their vet clinic. In theory, I was just along to fix a vacuum system in their mobile clinic. When I got there, though, just about everything else broke, too. I fixed the vacuum, a printer (actually half-fixed two printers), the internet twice, and the laminator. The grand finale, however, waited until I got back home, when the toilet of all things, failed in two unrelated but compounding ways simultaneously. I was not happy.