Two for one Tuesday

In spite of the fact that my blog is called cocktails with kevin I generally write next to nothing about cocktails. I generally just write about Kevin because . . . well . . . once you've gotten Kevin what more is there?

The phrase cocktails with kevin dates back to my days as an active real estate agent when once a year I would host a party for family, friends and past clients. My wife suggested the name of the party be Cocktails with Kevin. It stuck and so got carried on into blogdom.

Recently I added a a widget down on the lower right-hand side of the screen where every day a different drink recipe is listed. I do this because I care about viewers like you. And because I always feel a bit sorry for those who come across my blog by googling "summer cocktails" or "Easter cocktails" or "cocktails with pop rocks", all of which I've seen at one time or another and none of which are mentioned anywhere on my blog.

I did come across this though on Mostly Muppet Dot Com (gotta love that name!) and thought I'd share because it's booze related. And because I beat Mostly Muppet by ten drunkard points. Click below to try it yourself.


94%DRUNKARD
Incidentally my wife beat me by three points. We were meant to be together.

Passing the mung: a folk remedy for sinus congestion

Sickness abounds in my household right now and for well over a week I have not been feeling up to snuff. Up to sniff maybe. Definitely up to snuffle and up to snort but not up to snuff. It's that yucky sickness where you don't run a fever but just generally feel miserable because sinuses are congested far into your skull and breathing through your nose becomes a near impossibility. I can tell I'm on the mend now, but for a while it was rough.

A few nights ago I awoke from a deep antihistamine-induced sleep because my body could no longer sustain itself by breathing its own snot. My throat was sore from drainage and general crapitude and my sinuses were stopped up to the point that my nose was no longer even functional. Having already taken Bootafed (that's code for bootleg Sudafed) earlier in the evening I didn't want to pump more chemicals into my body, so I turned to that oracle of oracles that all desperate and overly trusting souls go to for cyber diagnoses, the internet.

Within moments I was directed to a granola-esque website that offered up folk remedies for everything from premenstrual cramps to conjunctivitis. A quick search on the terms nasal congestion led me to a lengthy list of over-the-pantry remedies to supposedly alleviate my condition and help me breathe again. I felt horrible and wanted to fall back asleep so I was open to just about any suggestions. Take note, gentle reader, desperation leads to increased lack of judgment and poor decision making.

Most all the remedies listed had two common ingredients, cayenne pepper and apple cider vinegar. Some had more ingredients like horseradish or garlic or onion powder but cayenne pepper and apple cider vinegar were common. Now cayenne pepper was a new one on me but I remember on WSB Radio Ludlow Porch used to have as a guest the Right and Honorable Dr. Dick Frymeyer, who would, after listening to callers rattle on about their symptoms, prescribe some folksy remedies, almost all of which called for apple cider vinegar. This website gained some credibility with me because they also centered on apple cider vinegar as a cure-all.

It didn't matter that I had never tried apple cider vinegar for anything outside of a salad dressing or that the aforementioned Dick Frymeyer was not himself a doctor and probably had a moonlighting job peddling snake oil out the back of his covered wagon. The website looked like it cared about my health, and if as many as two absolute strangers recommend apple cider vinegar for something, surely it must be a legitimate solution. Besides, I was desperate to breathe through my nose again, so I headed for the pantry.

My wife is somewhat the gourmet cook, so our pantry is chocked full of many ingredients that went unknown to me before marriage. In fact, if Monty Hall were to step into our kitchen and offer us $100 if we could produce some obscure food item, I'll bet we'd have a good shot at winning. Just off the top of my head for instance I can tell you that in the kitchen we have anchovy paste, fish oil , turmeric and coconut milk just to name a few. As far as kitchen wraps go, we have clingy plastic, aluminum foil, parchment paper, wax paper, and cheese cloth in addition to several sizes of plastic baggies. I don't mean to ramble. I'm just giving you an idea of what all we keep in our pantry.

Because you might need to know that stuff someday.

But the question is whether we had apple cider vinegar and cayenne pepper. Indeed, we did. In fact we have three kinds of vinegar and who knows how many different kinds of pepper, but the apple cider vinegar and ground cayenne pepper were fairly easy to put my hands on.

Like I said, there were several different recipes for sinus congestion cures, most of which called for cayenne pepper and apple cider vinegar in varying amounts, so I thought I'd quickly skim through all of them and then come up with my own medicinal concoction. After careful consideration I took a Swanky Swig from the cupboard, dumped in half a teaspoon of ground cayenne pepper and topped it off with apple cider vinegar. I gave it a brief stir with a butter knife and sat it back down on the counter to admire my creation.

It stank.

To a parent of a one-year-old vinegar just smells like a wet diaper. Not only does cayenne pepper not help the smell, it doesn't dissolve in vinegar either. For a few minutes I just stood there in the kitchen staring at cayenne pepper particles swirling around in a pool of apple cider vinegar thinking maybe they would dissolve and this infusion would evolve into a pleasantly fragrant and tasty treat, much like the kind I might buy at a snow cone stand or a Polynesian Tiki bar.

No such luck.

I finally picked up the glass and threw the mixture as far back into my throat as I could and quickly swallowed without trying to think about what I was doing. Like a well-meaning mother with awful tasting medicine I forced every gritty drop of it down my gullet. For a moment I must have had a look on my face reminiscent of painful death. Even congested, I could tell this stuff wasn't too good.

Ass fire. That's kinda how it tasted. Easy on the fire. Mostly just ass.

As far as curative properties go, this junk made my nose immediate start running a little bit which was a slight improvement over not being able to breath through it at all. But I was still overall very congested, besides, now the misery I was experiencing that stemmed from the burning vinegary taste in my mouth would have far overridden any positive side effects this stuff had. It was just horrible.

The next morning I tried adding some cinnamon and lemon juice to the fray thinking that would improve the flavor. It did not,. The new and improved concoctionnot only left a horrible taste in my mouth but also gave my stomach acids a run for their money. Like the pepper, the cinnamon wouldn't dissolve so long after I swallowed this new concoction I could still feel and taste vinegary peppery lemony cinnamon in the crevices of my molars. I could not get rid of it to save my life. These remedies were of minimal efficacy.

Looking back, the webstie I stumbled upon was probably just some platform for people whose goal it was to bring down the drug companies. After all what would the mensches at Merck or the folks at Pfizer do if we all stopped paying attention to the TV ads instructing us to ask our doctor about XYZ pharmaceutical and instead started pulling spices and acetic acids out of our cupboards to cure our ills? Mayhem would surely insue.

I eventually did come up with a decent folk remedy for nasal congestion that I found worked rather well and tasted much better than the one I found online.

Open up a jar of apple cider vinegar and sprinkle some ground cayenne pepper on the counter next to it. Remove two Bootafeds from the blister pack and then pass them over the apple cider vinegar and pepper, making sure none of the ingredients actually comes into contact with any of the others. Now pop the two pills into your mouth and swallow. Chase with water.

YouTube is my babysitter

When I worked in a cube farm, I had coworkers who spent every off-task moment scrolling through the endless photos, profiles and bulletins they had found on MySpace. That site never held my interest for very long, perhaps because I am further on in years than the bulk of those who make MySpace their space, but I recently have found myself visiting and revisiting YouTube with a similar fervor. I use it mainly to entertain my toddler, of course, but I can’t say I’m immune to the hypnotic trance induced by the campy, kitschy and sometimes downright bizarre things to be found in this corner of the innerwebs.

Who are the people who make these videos?

Like many children, Meryl is amazed by animals. The sheep and the donkey, the geese and the goats along with kittens and puppies and horses and monkeys all make for suitable cybertainment judging by the look on Meryl's face when I click play after finding a video that features one of these creatures. This also gives me an opportunity to teach her new words and expand our conversations beyond what she’d like for breakfast or whether she wants to sit on the potty, two topics that become more and more tedious with each passing day.

Outside of watching creatures from the animal kingdom, Meryl also likes to watch human babies in various stages of pleasure or distress. I think in the past three weeks alone she and I have seen just about every laughing baby on YouTube there is to see. There are babies who laugh at throwing food, babies who laugh at a mommy making silly faces, and babies who laugh at other babies. Some babies have a giggly laugh, while some have a screechy laugh. Still others have what can only be described as a maniacal laugh. It's the ones in this last group that make me fear for our future. Well, I guess when it comes right down to to it it would have to be a tie between the maniacal laughing babies and this one kid who takes a huge Dora the Explorer doll on the potty with her while her mother films the whole thing. Then again, we can only blame the parent for this last one.

When I'm jumping around the internet and come across one of those big tv-screen-like YouTube links where the first frame of the video is visible and whoever orchestrates the site is inviting me to click on the link to view the video, I usually pass. What people think I should find amusing and what I actually do find amusing are generally two different things. Kinda like when someone prefaces a joke by saying I heard a great joke yesterday; wanna hear it? At least on the internet we can politely pass and not be socially forced into hearing a joke we don't want to hear.

With that disclaimer, here are links to a few videos I discovered that Meryl or I found either funny, moving or just plain baffling. Click if you will. If not, no hard feelings.

Laughing Babies

Devil Sheep

Patches the Horse

Woman Dancing to Dora's Theme She needs to quit dancing and clean that room!

YouTube is My Life

Gooble Gobble One of Us

Mall of Georgia Kidgits' play area -- the unspoken rules

Before my daughter was born my wife and I would walk the mall and I would look down upon the children's play area there. I don't just mean I was on the second floor and the kids' area was on the first floor. I mean I held the play area in low regard. I had a certain disdain for it. Figuratively, I looked down upon it.

It's difficult for me to explain why I disliked it the way I did. I think it had something to do with the slovenly types that sometimes frequent the area. I'm sure if you go to any shopping mall with a kids' playground you'll see them there. They litter the pleather benches with their mammoth diaper bags, their food court purchases and worst of all their own wide asses. In fact the only thing separating the pleather bench from their wide asses is the latest fashion from Land's End or L.L. Bean. It's just not pleasant to look at.

Now that I parent a toddler who requires an outlet for her energy other than banging on pots or flushing the Fisher Price family down the toilet, I've acquired a certain appreciation for the indoor play area. After all, it's warm in the winter and cool in the summer. It comes complete with its own changing table, and if that's too immodest, the changing table offered by neighboring Nordstrom's is not only more private but also bigger and plusher. Indeed the play area is a convenient spot to sit relatively undisturbed and watch the world go by.

To those who make use of the mall play areas, I'd like to outline for the benefit of your child and mine (but mostly for me personally) some of the unspoken rules that apply. Sure, you've seen upon entering the sign that requests you remove your kid's shoes and leave your stroller outside, but I'm here to tell you some of the things that no one else might be willing to tell you.

First and foremost, kids aged five and older do not belong in this play area. Why, oh why, do some people think this is a suitable place to plop their fat selves down and let their elementary-aged children roam free while they cram more MSG into their gullets from styrofoam boxes they got at the Panda Express Chinese place? The few play fixtures that make up this area are clearly designed for the crawlers and nouveau walkers. A second grader, no matter how stupid, is not really going to derive much pleasure from the busy beads or the two-foot long tunnel the same way a 20-month-old kid will.

Maybe some see this as a convenient place to exchange their role of parent for that of a garbage disposal, but the rest of us would really appreciate it if they took their McCholesterol and their child back to the Food Court or better yet out to their car. Either way our children wouldn't have to be trampled by a big kid while we watch a Jabba the Hut lookalike shovel deep fry into its face.

Yuck! Enough said on that. Just thinking about it, I started to throw up in my mouth a little bit.

On another note, I am a fan of private ownership as much as the next consumer, but if you insist on displaying your kid's snack, sippy cup and diaper bag toy out on the bench beside you, I'm going to leave it to you to keep my kid from putting her grubby little paws all over these precious commodities. Sure, I'll tell her half-heartedly from across the way that those aren't hers to mess with or that they belong to that nice little boy and his mommy but I just think that if you bring shit like that into the arena, you're asking for trouble and deserve what you get.

This isn't the rational adults' play area. This is the kids' play area. More specifically it's for the little ones who developmentally just aren't ready to differentiate between things that belong to them and things that don't. You and I are adults so, sure, I can respect that your Cheerios aren't my Cheerios and your free Nordstrom giveaway balloon's not my free Nordstrom giveaway balloon, but toddlers don't grasp that. At their age they're not content to accept my explanation of one's right to property. I'm not saying don't bring the stuff in. I'm just saying if you bring it, I'm going to leave it up to you to referee.

Besides, I don't want to get off the comfy pleather seat.

Alternatively, I am always grateful to the mom who asks Do you mind if I give your daughter some goldfish crackers? I appreciate a parent who realizes it just sometimes makes for less headache for everyone if generosity prevails. When it comes to free snacks, my daughter has little concept of stranger danger and same goes for me.

Another unspoken rule, and this doesn't just apply to the play area, is meant specifically for the other dads out there. Don't wussify your child. Most of our children already have a parent whose job it is to coddle and pamper and occasionally overreact when a typical mid-playground collision occurs. My dear fellow fathers, our children look to us to be the parent who picks them back up, brushes them off and sends them on their way with little more than a pat on the butt.

Today my daughter and I showed up early to the play area and on the parent front there was just me, two moms with their kids, and another dad of two boys. Of the four parents there, the other dad was easily the biggest Nervous Nelly of the bunch. Every time either of his sons so much as looked back at him funny, he was up out of his seat asking them what was wrong. At one point a little girl who couldn't have been more than 18 months old bumped into his three-year-old son. Though the boy seemed to escape uninjured, he waited for the little girl to walk off and then purposefully dropped to the floor and faked his hurt cry.

Almost as though on cue, me and the two moms busted out laughing at this kid's display. He wasn't hurt. He just knew that if he put on a show his daddy would get up out of his seat and provide him with some undue attention. The kid was right.

Part of me wanted to go up to the dad and say to him Dude, you've got boys. You can't treat them this way but since part of the fun of being a parent is silently gloating at the fact that you are better at the job then most everyone else out there, I just kept my mouth shut.

The Kidgits play area at Mall of Georgia (why they call it kidgits I don't know -- is it for both kids and midgets or just kid midgets or what?) has a small playhouse complete with slide. This is a favorite feature for every kid that comes in the place. Because this is a high-traffic area sometimes congestion occurs. Here's a tip. If the kids can work it out between them who's going next, just leave them alone.

I'm not talking about the parent who has to assist a baby who otherwise wouldn't be able to go down the slide. That's different. What I'm saying is that everyone would have much more fun playing on the slide if all these over-protective parents would just get out of the way. As it is it seems like there's always at least one if not more moms or dads playing slide patrol making sure each kid goes down the slide in what the parent presumes is an orderly fashion. Instead the kids look like products on an assembly line, and each one just goes down hurriedly with a straight face so as to not upset the slide nazi.

This sounds all well and good but the fact of the matter is these kids would each get a turn at the slide regardless of what busy body stepped in to offer unneeded assistance. It is true that toddlers don't queue up and wait their turns the same way grown ups do at the Panda Express, but a kid who wants badly enough to go down the slide will eventually go down the slide.

If on the other hand your kid is one of those slide-o-phobes who after getting up on the first step then chooses to just stand there and pick his seat for the next ten minutes, leave him be too. That's his idea of fun. Just don't come crying when my daughter gently makes her way around him to enjoy the slide for the fourteenth time in a row. It's called survival of the fittest. Don't worry. It doesn't mean your child has a deficiency or anything. He's just learning his place. The world needs seat pickers too.

One final word of advice from me on the kids' play area. When the Teavana employee across the way brings out the free samples of his wares, do not leave your child unattended just so you can go taste the latest greatest infusion from the Far East slash West Coast. Yes, I know the goth kid with painted black fingernails puts a sign out claiming his tea aids memory or improves digestion or somehow makes one a better person, but leaving your child unattended even momentarily so that you can go drink some snake oil to boost your chi is just plain wrong. What would you think of a dad who, just for a minute or two, left his kid and hopped over to the Tinder Box to check out the pre-embargo Cuban cigars? That would be bad, right? Well, ditto for tea.

Now on the other hand if a dad wanted to check out the eye candy that works at the women's clothing store across from the Teavana, that's okay provided he doesn't have to get off his comfy pleather seat.

Hey, I don't make the rules. I'm just here to make the world a better place for everyone.

Okay, so . . . maybe just for me.

Ding dong door-to-door soliciting.

Both my wife and daughter were napping, so I was enjoying a relatively quiet Saturday afternoon today until two people came and rang my doorbell. If you're like me simply hearing a knock at the door or ringing of the doorbell sets off your Spidey sense. Ever since Ed McMahon died, I quit holding out for the Publisher's Clearinghouse Sweepstakes. If I'm expecting guests it's one thing, but when out of the blue someone comes calling, I immediately start to suspect mischief is afoot.

In our home, when someone signals their arrival at the front door our dog goes nuts. While my suspicion is that if someone were to ever break into our house, our Irish Terrier would go running to the doggie toy basket to grab something for the burglar to throw, his bark can sometimes come across as more vicious than his bite especially to those who don't know him. Our exterminator for instance is afraid of him, but then again those exterminators are a unique people unto themselves

Since my first guess as to who a mystery guest might be is usually someone who's selling aluminum siding or religion, I seldom run up and greet him with an open door and a smiling face. Instead, I cautiously tiptoe to the front hallway making sure to try and avoid being seen through the windows by whoever's on the other side. Our door isn't outfitted with a peephole so I just have to stand several feet away and discreetly peer through the slats of the shutters.

This time it was a forty-something couple. The man was thin with white hair and the woman was a heavyset blond with a poor dye job. She was holding a Christmas gift bag that contained something heavy enough to make the bottom sag. Even though curiosity was pushing me to open the door and find out what tidings they were offering, I decided I would find greater comfort and joy back in my comfy Rooms to Go chair. They didn't give me long to make the decision because shortly after they rang the doorbell, they decided to turn around and make their offering to my next-door neighbor instead. Maybe they were turned off by the dog.

Later this afternoon I discovered the mystery couple had left a flier on my door for presidential candidate Ron Paul. I'm not really up on Ron Paul so I don't know how glad or disappointed I should be that I didn't open the door. A brief perusal of his website shows pages labeled Homeschoolers for Ron Paul and Gun owners for Ron Paul. Incidentally why is homeschoolers supposedly one word while gun owners is two? Am I the only person who's bothered by this?

I will refrain from littering my website with my political views on home schooling and gunownership or anything else for that matter, not because I don't have views. It's just because I think if you are a member of the elite intelligetsia that reads my website, you probably are secure enough in your own political views that you could care less what mine or anyone else's are. If on the other hand you're one of those who needs someone else to tell you what you value and believe, send me a tax deductible donation of $20 and I will be glad to write you back outlining what social ills to indulge in and what books to light afire.

Just kidding. It wouldn't really be tax deductible, but I would gladly accept.

What I do wonder about though is what success door-to-door solicitors have with their product. I politely slammed the door on two Mormon proselytizers a couple weeks ago and wondered the same thing. OK, I didn't exactly slam the door in their faces. I shut it gently, but the conversation went something like this:

Me: [struggling not to spill cheap red wine while holding back a badly behaved 45-pound dog by the collar as I smile at two twenty-something Mormons holding a copy of the book thereof] Hey! How y'all doin' today?

Mitt and Moroni: Great, and you?

Me: [still smiling] Good, good. [Door closes.]

They, like the Ron Paul supporters, didn't stick around long before moving on to my neighbor's house. I really wished I could have followed them over there too since the neighbor's English is limited. He can say "hello" and ask "How are you?" when he gifts us fresh vegetables from his garden, but somehow I think the Latter Day followers may have run into a language barrier had they tried to convince him of Joseph Smith's prophetic abilities or that the ancient nation of Zion will be rebuilt in downtown Salt Lake. I'm just guessing.

Someday I'm going to ask one of these guys what their close ratio is. I mean out of all the doors they knock on trying to market their religion, how many people say to them Where can I sign up?

And these political campaigners? Out of all the doors they knock on, how many people say to them Ya know, I was in the middle of an online Scrabble game when you arrived, but since I have limited intelligence and don't have any clue what the presidential race is all about, I'm just gonna vote for your candidate?

Give me a break!

Now, I don't want anyone reading this to think I just pick on religious minorities or the politically zealous. Last year one of the neighbor kids rang my doorbell wanting to sell me cripcraps in order to benefit his school. I was perhaps a little more polite to him than I am to most, but he basically got the same smiling abrupt treatment.

I've taught in the public school system, and I'm well aware of where money ends up. I didn't tell the neighbor kid this, but if his parents want his school to have more money for something, they should look first to the board and the superintendent. That's where the decisions are made and any subsequent monies are mis-allocated or squandered.

Want more shekels for Johnny's classroom supplies? Look at how much money gets spent in the transportation department. Kids whose "behavior disorders" merit their own personal one-passenger bus complete with driver? Ch ching!

I remember the days when someone ringing a doorbell was likely a neighbor offering fresh cookies or a school chum wanting you to come out and play, but sadly those days ended during the Reagan administration along with hyperrealism, mood rings and the final season of Mork & Mindy. Now a knock at the door usually alerts us to the fact that we're about to become the next thread in a blanket solicitation, the product being religion, politics or cripcraps. And I'm not sure which one of them is worse.

Well, between those three it's probably a tie between politics and religion.

I don't know though. Cripcraps ain't all they used to be either.

Remember Creepy Crawlers? Oh, wait a minute. I meant Wacky Walkers. Either way, those were some quality cripcraps.

My Experian credit report

Today I took it upon myself to pull up my Experian credit report online. I'm in a good situation right now where I don't necessarily have to concern myself with what my credit report has on it. I have far more credit than I can afford and I don't plan on applying for a mortgage or new insurance or anything like that. But since, like many, I've decided on some new financial goals, I thought it best to make sure no one was reporting anything about me that shouldn't be reported.

Because I used to work for a company that pulled credit reports for third parties making inquiries, I have had more than my fair share of experience reading and disputing the reports from all three of the major credit reporting agencies. From what I saw it was rare that there was a significant error on a credit report unless someone happened to be a junior to a senior or vice versa. When a computer sees a similar name name at the same address it could care less whether or not the social security numbers match or even whether one person is dead and the other is still alive. Two family members with the same name should expect to have to unravel quite a tangled credit history at some point in their future, but anyway I digress. My point is that because I'm very familiar with the whole process, I don't share the mass paranoia that many do when it comes to identity theft or credit histories.

Anyway, here's what I found: Everything looked hunky dory with a few minor exceptions. An auto parts store was still reporting an account as open and unused for the past eight years, and it probably is still open, but since I don't have any use for it, I've disputed it with the hopes that the result comes back as closed. If not, I'll have to take it up with the merchant itself.

I know there are credit report nazis out there that will shout at me that if the account is showing a zero balance that I should not mess with it and instead just let it continue to show as open, but I don't buy that. The last thing I need is for a tech-savvy employee of that company deciding he's going to get charge happy on my credited nickel and make my life a living hell. I would much rather sacrifice a few points on my credit score than put myself at that kind of risk.

Additionally an employer from several years ago was still being listed as my current employer which frankly wouldn't have bothered me so much except that the employer's name was misspelled. I know it's shallow and pedantic of me, but I have little tolerance for that. It's G-W-I-N-N-E-T-T period. No E at the end, in spite of the fact that when I was growing up a sign along side Hwy 29 in Lilburn, GA said Welcome to Gwinnette [sic] County.

It's Gwinnett. Like Button Gwinnett who incidentally was one of the original signers of the Declaration of Independence. His signature to this day is one of the most valuable simply because, unlike other historical signers like Thomas Jefferson or John Adams, Button Gwinnett didn't throw his John Hancock around too much. This is possibly because he died relatively young at the age of 43. He died of complications after being the losing party of a duel. I forget who with though. Georgia public school doesn't ask you to remember that much unless you want extra credit. I seldom shot for extra credit.

Which brings us back to the credit report.

Rooms to Go's banking partner HSBC/RS still shows an account that is over ten years old. Again, it says the account is paid on time in full, but why is that shit still showing on my report? Most of that furniture didn't even survive into my marriage, and that wasn't to happen for another four years after I bought the stuff and I've been married seven and a half years now!

I wouldn't be concerned except that I had a negative experience with Rooms to Go back then and it's left a bitter taste in my mouth ever since. I don't like a company that makes you jump up and down and scream in order to get them to follow through on their own promises. Any asshole customer can make a scene in a store, but it takes a certain degree of social engineering to cause a scene and get the desired result. Been there. Done that. Got the couch, end tables, coffee table, two lamps and an arm chair. The arm chair survives to this day.

The only other thing on the report that irked me was in the personal information section. I used to think the aliases and former addresses didn't matter until I got a few calls at the aforementioned job from people who wanted desperately to dispute inaccuracies in that section of their credit report. One was a woman who was about to be appointed judge and the other was from a man in the federal intelligence industry. Both of their concerns were the same. They didn't want a faulty address showing because their being hired depended on the employer viewing them as honest and forthcoming. An undisclosed address could have been looked at unfavorably.

My bootleg address was weird because it in no way resembled any place I had ever lived before. Furthermore, I mapquested the address and it was in no place I ever would have lived. I wouldn't have wished such a reside on my worst enemy in fact. Sure, I like living on the edge from time to time, but to live in a home where the neighbor's first language is gunfire? No thanks. The last thing I need is to wake up to the sound of someone next door shouting Say hello to my little friend just before riddling my newly purchased Rooms to Go furniture with bullet holes.

Again, I doubt the shady address would really cause me too much to worry about. I'm not likely to be appointed judge or be offered a job where I get top secret phone calls on my shoe phone anytime soon, but disputing it gives me something to do. If someone is pulling up my personal information, I want it to be right.

I'm well aware of the fact that I only pulled one report when there are three credit reporting agencies, Equifax and TransUnion being the other two, but you only get to view a report for free once a year from each of the agencies. If you log onto annualcreditreport.com the site gives you the choice. Point to whichever one you want (or all three) and it comes to your computer screen abzolutely free. I'll get one from another bureau four months down the line, but in the meantime this one should tide me over.

As for that bootleg address, it still puzzles me. Where did it come from and how did it get listed on my report? Part of me wants to go knock on the door and see who answers. Would I be greeted by a knife-wielding gang leader? A unibomber? A Mitt Romney supporter? Possibly all of the above?

What if when I showed up at the door I was greeted by my doppelganger and his entire place was furnished with my old Rooms to Go furniture?

Who knows?

I am a husband and a father now so I cannot go flying into the face of danger the way I used to.

I could always google the address though.