Born to Shred!

Oh sleuthy reader! What do you think could be the story behind this picture?

I'll give you a clue: the red/orange bit is part of the Mastercard logo. Yes, this is the remains of a shredded debit card. A shredded debit card that we suddenly needed un-shredded.

The back story here is that, leafing through my online log of transactions one day, I spotted a couple that weren't obviously us. On checking with my partner-in-shelter-in-place, we confirmed that they appeared to be fraudulent, and phoned the bank to get it sorted out.

The bank were great about sending out a new debit card quickly and cancelling the old one. Once the new one is received and appears to be working, what do you do with the old one? Well, you destroy it, of course. You'll never need that card again; you've got a working replacement.

Except for the fact that the bank won't be quite as efficient at sending out the form to claim for the fraudulent transactions, and when it finally arrives, it will require the old card number. Do we have it written down anywhere? Nope, too security conscious for that. Saved in an online account or computer? Nope, too paranoid for that as well. Well, don't worry, I fed it through the shredder vertically so the card number is probably in tact on one of the fragments.

Errr, nope, you bought a cross-cut shredder, so the card is in little bits.

Now I don't want to say that Helen's got time on her hands, or doesn't have enough to gainfully do. But having sifted through a bin full of shredding, about an hour later she sent me this picture:

This, dear reader, is the amazing woman I married (and also the number of a debit card which no longer works, for those of you thinking bad thoughts); I'm sure I'd have just given up and phoned the bank again, but no, she refused to be defeated.

We're also taking advantage of the Memorial Day holiday to have a bit of a staycation, with various entertainments planned. One of those involved walking down to the Baylands, where we got to see the swallows nesting:

Looks like we're in for some pretty hot weather over the next few days, so I feel the air conditioning is going to get a bit of a bashing as we continue our staycation. Part of the plan for the staycation appears to be something like, "Have fun reassembling shredded documents", so perhaps someone got ideas from putting that card back together...