Wear Red Day

As you may have gathered from my lack of posts, this has been a whirlwind week for me. I had ideas for posts and then couldn't find the time to get them done.

One of the entries I meant to post was about Friday's Wear Red Day. Did you know that Friday, February 2nd was Wear Red Day for women? It's a national observance to give women a personal and urgent wakeup call about their risk for heart disease. Did you know that heart disease is the number one killer of women in America?

I'm sorry I didn't get this posted in time for you to wear red if you didn't already know about it. I will mark my calendar to do better next year. In the meantime you can go to this site to learn more about National Wear Red Day and here are some tools for lowering your heart disease risk.

Watch Out for Gift Card Fraud

Thanks to my friend Colette for alerting me to a problem with some gift cards. Especially at this time of year a lot of us buy gift cards - they are an easy way to get someone a gift when you want to give the recipient a choice. This information will come in handy if you don't want to get ripped off.

Yesterday Colette sent me an email which described the problem as follows:

"Well the crooks have found a way to rob you of your gift card balance.

If you buy Gift Cards from a display rack that has various store cards you may become a victim of theft. Crooks are now jotting down the card numbers in the store and then wait a few days and call to see how much of a balance THEY have on the card.

Once they find the card is "activated", they go online and start shopping. You may want to purchase your card from a customer service person, where they do not have the Gift Cards viewable to the public."

Of course you have to be careful about what you believe in forwarded email messages. This message was verified as credible at the Snopes.com site here. Later in the day Colette called me to let me know there was a story about this issue on King5 News. They did a good job of describing the issue and explaining how to buy gift cards safely. You can read King5's story here.

Be safe shopping out there, everybody!