Pay no attention to the junk piled behind the tree that I didn't notice you could see when I took this picture with my phone

Well hello, long-hibernating tabletop tree that I bought for Shoebox Manor—my first elfin Chicago apartment—and that eventually became our dining-room tree when my ex and I bought our palatial two-tree-accommodating condo. I finally rescued the tree when I liquidated my storage unit this summer, and at last its branches are complete again in their mélange of silver, white and cornflower blue ornaments, ribbons and besequined birds artfully curated to complement our old Wedgewood dining room. The palette doesn’t quite work with my mom’s Rustic Kountree Krafts décor, but I choose to squint and pretend it does. Plus I did a sloppy job perching the birds on the branches so I’ll have to edit some pokey-outy feathered tails at a later date.

I wasn’t really in the mood for Christmas carols, but I found an old Chicago playlist so I decorated the tree to the dulcet—and wistfully nostalgic—tones of Beautiful Day, Ray of Light, Around the World, Bad Romance, Get Lucky, Single Ladies, Whispering Your Name and other regular-rotation players from the soundtrack of my old life. The combination of my Chicago tree and my Chicago tunes put me in a mood I’m not sure I’m ready to be in, but the corner is dusted and vacuumed, the tree is up, and all that’s left to do is figure out where I hid my timer so the lights will automatically be on every night when I go to bed and every morning when I wake up.

Speaking of going to bed ... good night!

Does this smell stinky to you?

I recently got a letter from Kwik Trip saying a car with my license plate was seen driving away without paying for gas at 5:07 am on a weekday in Marshalltown, IA--a faraway city I have never visited. It was written with clumsy English phrasing and asked me to send a credit card number, so I thought it was a scam and ignored it.

Then I got another letter that was very threatening. I was concerned that the sender somehow had my license plate number, name and address, so I sent a message to the Kwik Trip corporate office via its website instead of the contact info on the letters to see if it was legitimately from them--and they promptly responded to say yes, and whoever drove away without paying either had an altered license plate or had stolen one of mine--and *I* needed to file a police report and provide Kwik Trip with layers of proof that it wasn't my car that drove away.

I wrote back using my anger words saying 1) if they don't demand a credit card or up-front payment before letting people pump gas it's their irresponsible corporate practice and therefore their problem, not mine, 2) I have no obligation to spend time calling the police and chasing down paperwork to send them based on unsubstantiated, poorly written accusations, and 3) the burden of proof is on them and they need to send me a photo of my car and license plate at their pump or leave me the fuck alone. They promptly wrote back again to tell me that they had benevolently canceled my "account" and that I "owed" them no money.

So questions: Does this smell stinky? Do you think it's some kind of Kwik Trip corporate scam? Did they illegally obtain my personal and vehicle information? Did they by any definition harass me? Should I call the police on them?

In the mean time: If their stupidly spelled name weren't enough to drive you away, DON'T SHOP AT KWIK TRIP so you can prevent yourselves from being scammed. Fucking assholes.

I have a paper trail and a string of stupidly incriminating emails from Kwik Trip. I'm gonna keep pursuing the issue with the police and the Better Business Bureau and all of Twitter just to be a pain in the ass back at them.