I Am Not Your Mother

Okay, I’m really tired and I’m having trouble making accurate sense of my observations.

- The guy at work who turned on a dime as soon as came around the corner while taking my lunch to the microwave was not avoiding me, just probably someone who forgot something at his desk.
- The telephony services van driving through the parking lot, occupied by two males, was probably not a tactical team meant to stalk me, but rather just doing work on the building.
- The guy at the grocery store moving the pallet jack of A&W Root Beer was not trying to impede my movement, he was traversing the soda aisle.

Of course I took all of these potential threats seriously, as you would if your life depended on it. But typically my point in time judgment is a bit more accurate.

Speaking of the grocery store, I’m making pasta carbonara for dinner. I sort of lied in the comments section of that link. I couldn’t wait until the weekend to try the dish. And I don’t know Carla personally, but anyone who lists sharp knives, cast iron, and small dogs for cleaning as topics of interest wins a spot among my blog bookmarks.

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All You Can Eat

Luckily, the power didn’t go out during the most recent snowfall. It was a few flakes over a foot this time. I knew I would be snowed in, so my strategy was preparedness and supply conservation.

Obviously I bought enough beer and bourbon to hold me through a few days of snow induced house arrest, but food would be another issue.

Essentially, food provisions boil down to two types: those you have to heat up, and those you don’t. You can find a box of pasta on sale at the grocery store for about a dollar. But without power, you can’t boil the water to cook it. Same goes for raw meats and frozen food items. Note that for the purposes of this explanation, I’m ignoring the potential of cooking with cast iron in the fireplace.

The second food category consists of items you can eat ‘as is.’ Raw veggies, fruit, nuts, most canned goods, bread, and as was my diet for the last day, deli meats, are all good expamples. During the early part of the storm, while power was on, I ate items from the first category to sustain my stash of those in the second. I was eating food that required power to prepare in case later on, if I had lost power, I still had food to eat that didn’t require electricity to prepare.

Of course, items like deli meats are in category 2 in the winter and category 1 in the summer because they require refrigeration. If power had gone out, I could have kept my ham and swiss from spoiling by placing them inside a large cooler, i.e. my front porch. My only concern then would be whether I had a ham sammy or a ham-and-swiss popsicle.

Luckily, I didn’t have to rely on my preparation this time. The key, though, is that I could have if I needed to.

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Milk Aisle Intolerance

We’re expecting anywhere between twelve and twenty four inches of snow, depending upon who you ask, tomorrow. Because it’s expected to start in the early afternoon, the grocery store was a complete mad house today. None of this is a surprise, because Delawarians are completely incompetent when it comes to snow.

We’re going to be stuck in our houses, maybe, until Sunday, and people are buying stuff like its Y2K all over again. I actually laughed out loud at the empty milk shelves and the women almost coming to tears over them. See blurry cell phone pic. The (pretty attractive) woman behind me in the checkout line said that she saw a woman buying four gallons of milk. Four gallons!?!?



Now, I’ll admit that an increases level of grocery fervor is tolerable, considering that the Super Bowl is this weekend and that the shopping that had been planned for Saturday had to be accelerated, but c’mon!

Treasa and I, of course, predicted the chaos and went to the liquor store yesterday. I don’t even want to know how crazy that place was today.

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Colonel Mustard, In The Study, With The Maglite

It’s supposed to be in the low teens tonight. Treasa is over for a roaring fire, my renowned meat sauce, a bottle of cabernet and 24 episodes into the wee hours of tomorrow. Also making the trip are her two German Shorthaired Pointers, Brogan, the male, and Rohan, whose name is pronounced like what you do in a canoe, the female.



In so far as the truck break-in fallout is concerned, I have two potential avenues to track my prey. First, are fingerprints. These, unfortunately, are not an option. I made the decision not to dust for prints. How could I explain myself, a supposed banker, possessing a CSI kit and combing for forensic evidence?

Secondly, is the GPS itself. The thing about a GPS is that in order for it to give you directions to where you need to go, a computer has to know where you are. If a computer knows where the GPS unit is, I can track it. Unfortunately, I can only track it if it’s powered on. It’s hasn’t shown up on the grid yet. This either means that I’ve been targeted and my attacker has disposed of the GPS, or the junkie that took it hasn’t found a buyer yet. Time will tell.

This whole ordeal has me thinking about home security though. If someone had broken into my truck during the holiday season, one could surmise that they were looking for presents left in a vehicle and happened to stumble on my GPS. A vehicle break-in this time of year brings into question my, and Treasa’s, safety in my home.

This highlights the necessity of keeping everyday household items placed around your house that can also be used as weapons in the event of a home invasion. For the sake of this discussion, I’ll leave out firearms. They should always be locked in a safe, and therefore, may not be the best thing to rely on if your life depends on your actions within the next few seconds.

Bedroom: I keep a Maglite flashlight on my bed stand. Not only great for when power goes out, but Maglite’s also make good weapons.

Maglite flashlights have been known to be used as mêlée weapons. On March 30, 2007, the Los Angeles Police Department announced that they would be switching to a smaller, lighter LED flashlight that cannot be used as batons, in response to a highly publicized incident where an officer was accused of using excessive force against a suspect by using a Maglite

Kitchen: Obviously, cutlery is a good choice. However, your attacker will know about that as well. I keep a large pair of scissors in a drawer, they also serve as a good impaling device. Silverware. Cast iron skillets. My favorite ones are made by Lodge.

Dining Room: Candle stick holders will do a nice job when struck with force against a forehead. Also, break the bowl off of a wine glass, and the stem and foot will stab quite well.

Garage: Hammers, screw drivers, saws, nail guns…all this should be pretty obvious. What’s not, however, is a plumb bob. Consider the plumb bob the Lowe’s equivalent of a medieval mace.

Living Room: Fire place set. Maglite by the television.

Office: Letter opener. Any pen or pencil. Scissors. A stapler also can serve as a nice interrogation device should you capture your trespasser.

Others: Dog leashes. If a 13 year old girl in Saudi Arabia can get 90 lashes over a possessing a cell phone, your dog’s leash can serve as a weapon.

By no means is this an exhaustive list. I didn’t list the variety of pocket knives and Leatherman mini tools I own. You can be certain I’ll be looking to strategically place additional items around my house within the next coming days.

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A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words

As you can imagine, I’m a bit skeptical of packages left on my front porch. I hadn’t ordered anything in awhile. So great, this is either a bomb or someone’s head packaged in dry ice.

The odds of it being a bomb are slim. If you were the target of one of my operations, somehow was left alive, then figured out that I was the one who was responsible, and then tracked me down through my maze of cover stories, you would have to be smart enough to know that I wouldn’t fall for the old ‘bomb in the box by the front door’ trick.

Ok, so whose head is it?

Wait, a return address from Banjo Jim? Anyone who knows Banjo Jim, and isn’t dead because of it, is a friend of mine. He lives down state, below the canal, where things tend to lag a few decades behind the rest of us. He’s a man of peculiar wit, possesses an encyclopedic memory of crossword answers, and as a result of his time spent in the Navy, besides receiving a tidy monthly pension, has a pretty substantial network in the import/export business. Every so often a shipment of something useful gets diverted to me.

Today it’s a pair of black tactical gear bags, a letter, and a black t-shirt. Yes, a t-shirt. A black, size large, Fruit of the Loom t-shirt. I know I mentioned his ‘peculiar wit,’ however I want to go back and reemphasize the ‘peculiar.’

My scanner has decided to take the night off, so I had to take a digital picture of the actual letter.



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Thank You, Come Again

After work I went over to a small strip mall to meet someone on Mother’s behalf. This was the kind of place that was busy enough so that two people arriving at the same time wouldn’t be the only thing to watch, but not so congested that you had a hard time keeping track of who was coming in and out.

The strip mall had two ways in and out, one on each end of the parking lot. I entered from the west side. As I was pulling into my isolated parking spot, I observed a loading truck pull up on the east end, partially obstructing the exit. That way out now pinched the flow of traffic to one lane. It could still be used for a quick escape unless some innocent was entering as I tried to speed away. Or, of course, it could be by design.

Either way, the meet had to take place now. With the parking lot sparsely populated, sitting in a parked car for the truck to depart, if in fact the truck was there for legitimate reasons, was not an option. It would draw too much attention.

When I saw someone matching the rough description of the person I was waiting for walk into the convenience store, I followed. To even a fairly well trained eye, as well as the security cameras, our contact looked polite and casual. After my contact grabbed a bottle of Pepsi (blech) from the refrigerator, he held the door open for me so I could select a Coke Zero. Holding the door open gave the window just enough time to collect some condensation to further obstruct what our aligned bodies could not. Two electronic monitors were now inside my jacket. They were equipped with both a GPS and a satellite enabled recorder. We walked to the counter without any additional interaction, paid, and went our separate ways.

With the east end still partially blocked, and no sign of an ambush coming from the west, I exited where I entered and made my way back home.

What were the two devices for, you ask? Well, Mother’s intelligence places someone of interest at the Baltimore Boat Show tomorrow. Should they purchase a boat, it’s my job to make sure one of these devices is concealed inside. Why two? Well, in case they buy two boats.

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Didn't Shake Me, Didn't Even Stir Me One Bit

I had to stop at the grocery store on the way home. I was out of Coke Zero. Come about 1 PM, sometime a man’s just has to get his caffeine fix to make it through another meeting. In order pinch pennies where I can, I’ll buy cases of it at a time and bring it in to work instead of frequenting the vending machines.

As I was making my way through a busy aisle, a man suddenly stopped and started to count the items in his cart. He was waaaay over the limit for the express line, so I had no idea what he was doing. When you’re in a tight area with a lot of unknown subjects moving about and suddenly your mobility is hindered, you prepare for an ambush or you ready yourself to die.

Instinctively I grabbed a can of tuna fish off of the shelf. This, or any other canned item, can either be used as a bludgeoning device or as something to hurl at your attacker’s brow in close quarters. With the blocker ahead of me, I backed up against the right side of the aisle and checked back down to my left. This was previously my 6 o’clock. I did this for two reasons. The first, the attack would probably come from behind me. Secondly, the stupid old blocker caused enough congestion so that if the assailant was coming from that direction, they’d be impeded for long enough for me to recognize the attack.

There was no threat. As it was, I needed some tuna anyway. I exchanged the one I had in my hand for another brand that was on sale, proceeded to check out, and made my way back home.

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Quit Buggin' Me

Compartmentalization: (A) the process by which individuals involved in a plan only know about, and complete, a distinct part of the whole. This means that, if a person was captured and interrogated under duress, only their part of the operation would be compromised. If a chain is as strong as its weakest link, by doing it this way, that weakest link is not only replaceable, but expendable, should they mess up. (B) part of Mother’s plan that scheduled me to meet Duncan DuCaine at the corporate cafeteria.

Typically, I wouldn’t want to know the name of the person I’m working with. And I definitely wouldn’t volunteer mine. However, since we’re co-workers, if we were to run into each other at a later date, a certain amount of familiarity is to be expected. Considering the hundred or so people that may remember us talking, mutual denial is not a possibility.

I don’t know if Duncan works for Mother. He could be working parallel, or he could just be pissed off at his current boss and looking to earn a few extra bucks. Either way, he was able to smuggle in a few bugs that I’ll need to gather intell.

We make small talk on the way back to my office. He’s discussing the advantages of mechanical switch keyboards vs. what I’m working with. Mildly interesting, yet irrelevant to the task at hand. As Duncan pulls the metal case containing the bugs out of his pocket and opens it for me to inspect, we hear a third voice. Not good.

Every office has one, I would imagine. The guy asking you to go grab a cup of coffee with him four times a day. The guy asking you how your weekend was at 12:18 PM on Wednesday. The guy who needs to ask you what time a meeting is even though both of you just received the same email half an hour ago. He’s harmless – pretty much the nicest guy in the world. But damn it! Why do you pick now to see what I’m doing for lunch today?

Both Duncan and I ignore the metal case and its contents. As I stand up to detract attention from my desk, Duncan tells him he should go try today’s deli special. I take the case and slip it into my pocket. Poker faces, smiles, laughs, and disaster averted.

I don’t know Duncan, but he was able to bring surveillance equipment into a corporate office and remain calm in the face of a threat. He could be Mother’s. He might not be. Either way, he’s probably someone I want on my side.

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Can You Hear Me Now?

Everything you do for a corporation is monitored. Every email you send, every internet page you open, and while there may not be an audio recording, every phone call you make. In this regard, corporate life is very similar to remaining undercover – you have to assume that everything you do is being watched. Therefore, communicating with people outside the company without leaving a trace can be difficult.

This being said, it took me under a day to find a way around this.

At least in the banking industry, just about everyone has a BlackBerry. They’re great tools for scheduling, email management and accessibility. They have become ubiquitous. You will find people sending emails while talking to you, sitting in meetings and while using the restroom. And everyone is using the same model phone.

So, I went and got myself a BlackBerry. Even from two feet away, you can’t tell if I’m using my personal phone or a company issued one. Now I can contact the people I need, without being monitored, and it looks like I’m conducting routine business.

While this is advantageous for me, I have to assume that my targets are doing this as well.


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Nothing's as mean as giving a little child something useful for Christmas. ~Kin Hubbard

What did you get for Christmas? I got survival nutrition, performance clothing, various cultural manuals, a knife sharpener and an extremely large piece of dead cow for dinner.

I gave Mother an unopened envelope.

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