Lives of Others

The academic year has ended and Annelien left the exciting life in beautiful South Bend behind to come home to foggy San Francisco. The classical San Francisco summer has begun and yes, it’s cold and rainy as usual, with a fine mist covering the city in a romantic, eerie way. Some people don’t think it’s all that special though and they are starting to leave the city for the summer.

We spent a wonderful weekend together, visiting a newborn baby (welcome Anamika!), celebrating birthdays and getting to know new people and new drinks (like the wonderful Brooklyn cocktail at bar Churchill), meeting up with friends and almost attending the exhibit about Gertrude Stein at the Contemporary Jewish Museum. We did not quite make it to the museum for reasons that are too embarrassing to tell. We are hopeful though that we’ll make it on our second try.

I had to earn this nice weekend though. Annelien, the CFO of our household, made me do some homework first. This morning, I had to go through our credit card statements of the last quarter. A few months ago, someone copied our credit card information and started purchasing things in Miami, Florida. At a Walmart of all places! Now, you know that we would never shop at a supermarket that is not worker-owned and where not everything is local, organic and grass-fed. So we knew right away that something was off when we saw the line with the Walmart expense. Also, someone had been gambling at the Porky Pig Casino. After the security breach, Annelien instructed me to check our statements every few weeks. When she got back home, she was a little upset after she learned that I hadn’t even started my assignment.

(Nighthawks, Edward Hopper, Art Institute of Chicago)

So today, I set out early and started reviewing all the statements at the crack of dawn. Soon I got carried away by the names of the places we both had been to and the things we had done over the last couple of months. I started day-dreaming and every new line felt like an entry in a diary talking about the lives of others. How fun that something as boring as a credit card statement can bring back all these happy memories. And going through the statements, I also got to know that Annelien had been hanging out at exotic places like the Cornbarn Tavern in Mishawaka and Fiddler’s Hearth in South Bend while she was away. No visits were paid to Walmart though and I didn’t see any gambling expenses either.