What started off as a pretty cool day, turned into a nightmare.

This morning Rob and I got up early, got ready, and headed out to Montclair for our hair appointments. We got there with some time to kill so we made a stop in at Starbucks for our usual drinks. We then headed to Gebhart.

Rob got his much needed hair cut (it's been two months and he was starting to look like a Chia Pet). I decided to change my hair a bit. It's been ash blonde with a few platinum highlights by my face. The ash was pretty pale and was washing me out a bit so we decided to go for a more dark golden blonde with the platinum highlights. What we didn't expect was my hair to suck the color up like no tomorrow (normally it won't take color easily). My hair ended up a lot darker than we had been going for. Inside it looks like a light to medium brown. Outside it's a golden light brown. While it's not the color I was going for, it's super cool. The contrast between the hair and the highlights looks amazing. I'm going to see how it fades and decide from there if I want to keep the main color brown or if I want to take it back up to a dark blonde. Either way, the platinum highlights are staying.

After the hair salon we ate lunch at Golden China and then headed to a nearby ATM to pick some cash up. We had been planning on doing some shopping, seeing a movie, and getting dinner out in that area. When Rob tried to get money out, there was a problem. His balance was super low (which it shouldn't have been because his paycheck hit Thursday night) and it said he had exceeded his maximum withdrawal for the day (which is $500). He called the bank and was not given good news. On the 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th, major withdrawals had been made from his checking and from our savings. Neither of us took that money out. They took $500 each day from his checking and when that ran dry started taking it from our savings. So far, we know of $2000 that has been stolen from our accounts. Rob didn't lose his ATM card and all of the ones the bank has sent out in the past few years or so have been accounted for. We had no idea at all how someone could be withdrawing money from our accounts. Hell, I don't even know Rob's pin number. Plus, we shred everything and take good care not to do anything dumb that might put either of us at risk for identity theft. The bank didn't know how this was happening either.

The bank cancelled Rob's card and we're going to check on a daily basis to see if money keeps being taken our of our accounts. We also need to get a complete statement of recent withdrawals to make sure that no more than 2k has been taken. The bank said that they would try to give us our money back on Tuesday, but we needed to fill out a police report and they needed to look into matters and decide that it was a non-normal pattern of withdrawals for us to get our money back.

After the phone call with the bank we headed to the Claremont police station, but were told we needed to go to the one nearest where we live. On the way home we made a brief stop into LionHeart games just to take a break. We said hi to Kat and Marcelo and got to see little Marcelo as well. We also found out that there's going to be another addition to their family in the near future. Congrats Kat! I'm crossing my fingers for you and hoping it's a girl (even though we both know that Figueroa men only produce boys). Unfortunately, the game store didn't have the new book or new minis set we were looking for yet.

We then headed back to our neck of the woods and went to our local police station. They told us that we needed a print out from the bank showing all the withdrawals (which, by the way, were made from 7-Elevens all over the place like LA, Fullerton, Northridge, and Goleta) in order to fill out a report. So, we left without being able to do anything. When we got back home Rob called the bank and told them about this. They said that their branches couldn't give us anything like that, we had to get it online... but their system is down for the weekend. So, Monday at work Rob is going to print out the statement and Monday night we're going to take it over to the police station and fill out the report. The bank stopped access to our account through Rob's ATM card. Hopefully, this will stop whoever is accesing our money as well. Hopefully. We don't know if it will or not considering we have no clue how they're using an ATM to get our money when they don't have an ATM card or the PIN.

Rob also tried to check his credit report to make sure people aren't able to open things in his name, but he couldn't do that. His ATM card is his only card like that (he has no credit cards) so he couldn't buy one. He called one of the credit reporting agencies and filed a fraud alert and was told that they will mail him a way to get a free credit report within the week.

So, this is the complete insanity and frustration that was our day. Since his ATM card was stopped we no longer have any access to what's left of the money and we're not 100% guaranteed that whoever is stealing our money has been stopped. I guess we'll know that when we call the bank over the next few days to see if there have been any more transactions. If there have, I have no idea what we can do to stop this. I just pray we get our money back. With me out of work we need every cent we have saved.

Later on we decided to head out of the house and went to Target to look around and The Olive Garden for dinner. Special thanks go out to my Mom who let me use her credit card to pay for dinner. She rocks more than I can ever say. Now we're back at home and are probably going to head to the business center and play some Neopets and try to put this mess out of our heads since there's nothing we can do until Monday.

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You Are Bold And Brave

But daring? Not usually? You tend to like to make calculated risks. So while you may not be base jumping any time soon... You are up for whatever's new and (a little) exciting!

How Daring Are You?