I’m working with some great buyers & sellers and having a great time but it seems like there is never enough time in the day and on days you think you will have the time, something happens that wasn’t supposed to.  Today it was a bad person who decided to break into my car with a brick and steal my GPS.  He not only destroyed my window, but he severly damaged the trim pieces and A-Pillar around it so I’m in a rental car for at least several days.  My guess is $1000+ damage for a 4-year-old GPS worth MAYBE $200.  He did this on a busy street corner just southeast of downtown Minneapolis at 11:15am.

Amazing thing though, the Minneapolis Police Department was able to locate the evil-doer and recover my GPS.  Even though it took them 15-20 minutes to show up to the crime scene (I had just missed the guy who broke in to my car) they were able to find him less than 30 minutes later.  Was it great police work, dumb luck, or a dumb criminal?  My guess is the 3rd option, but hey… I’ll take it whatever way I can.  I had my GPS about an hour after it was stolen but I still have a damaged car and $1000 insurance deductible to deal with.

To top it off, my car was backed into in parking lots in both March and this week… so I’ve had about $5000 in damage to my car in 3 different incidents in the last 45 days after being incident-free for a couple years.  With more than 18,000 miles each year things are bound to happen but still… can’t I get a break?

Anyways… I’ll be back soon with new blog posts that I hope continue to interest and educate you… as always, feel free to call or email me if I can be of any assistance.

Manhattan man deluged with 2,000 copies of his credit card

Associated Press

Last update: July 26, 2007 – 9:59 AM

NEW YORK — Frank Van Buren gets a lot more credit than he deserves.

The Manhattan accountant found himself flooded with plastic in recent weeks, as ExxonMobil credit cards kept on coming. Van Buren, who said he has had an ExxonMobil account for his business for 17 years, had ordered two copies of his card because it was expiring.

He got the cards he requested — and then got two boxes with 1,000 cards each. Van Buren said it took hours to shred the cards, which all had his name and account number.

“How could you send me 2,000 cards by mistake?” Van Buren said he asked customer-service representatives.

ExxonMobil Corp. spokeswoman Paula Chen said the Irving, Texas-based oil company was looking into the mix-up.