Spam? Not-A-Lot

I don’t get too much spam these days because my ISP is pretty good at filtering out most of the usual run-of-the-mill stuff. But I got this one today and it totally cracked me up:

Hallo,

My name is Elena, I'm 32 years and I writing you from Russia. I work in municipal bibliotheca and I can use  computer afterwards I finish work if possible. Our situation is very difficulty and I decided to write you this message in despair.

I have little daughter Anghelina, she is 8 years old, her father leaved us and we inhabit with my mother.

As effect of serios crisis lately my mother lost job (the shop  where she worked was  ruined) and our situation became dreadful.

Prices for gas and electricity are very expensive in our region and we can not use it to heat our home  anylonger.

The winter arriving and weather is very cold here already. We are much distressed and we have not experience how to do.

The only possibility for us to heat our home is to use transportable wood-firing oven which supply with heat with burning wood (fire). We have sufficiency wood in our region and this oven will be heating  our house complete all winter with minimal cost.

We urgently in need of this oven, but we cannot buy it in our local shop because it price 8136 ruble (equivalent of 191 Euro) and we can not to collect too much money.

May be you own any old  portable wood burning oven and if you finished to use it, we will be very grateful  if you can gift it for us and prepare delivery of this oven to our adress (170 km from Moscow). This ovens can be different , they can be made from cast iron and weight 100 - 150kg.

I desire to have your answer soon.

Elena.
Russia

All spelling errors intact. I mean really! Aside from the fact that she doesn’t know me from a hole in the ice (nor I her) and gives me no real contact information outside of an email address, this is not a practical request. How would I mail a wood stove (one that was just hanging around unused) to Russia from the west coast of Canada? The postage alone would be more than the thing was worth! I’m guessing she would prefer money to…ahem, purchase her own stove? Assuming that any of this is true which of course it very likely isn’t. This is a very interesting variation on the old Nigerian Scam. You’d think everyone with an email address would be blinking alarm bells if they received something like this but obviously there’s a sucker born every minute. Otherwise why on earth would anyone continue to try this type of solicitation? It’s all beyond me.

And yes, I do happen to have a wood stove that’s not currently being used. It sits in my fireplace and just needs some paper, kindling and wood and its ready to go. We haven’t been using it because we don’t spend much time in the living/dining room these days and it seems pointless to heat the area we aren’t currently inhabiting. Though I’m sure the urge will hit as the days get darker and the weather gets more foul. I don’t think that’s quite what our “Elena” is after however, do you? Now if she said she needed some wool to knit herself and her family some mittens and hats, I might be more willing to negotiate.

Speaking of foul weather, it’s been pretty soggy around here. Today there’s also a nice wind to whip the rain and wet leaves at you and try to turn your umbrella inside out. I was already out and about in it getting some groceries to tide us over until we can do a better stocking-up. T-Man went back to work today for the first time in a week and it seems too quiet in here. Not to worry though, the grandbeasties are due later and that should liven things up some! We aren’t in quarantine anymore. Yay!

Not much else is new or at least blogable (is that a word?). I’m kind of stuck in a state where I have a bunch of projects started and no fire to work on them. It’s like wallowing in molasses. I have many more on the backburner but I don’t dare start anything new until something gets completed first. I don’t like having too many UFOs because then a certain portion of them will never get done. I lose momentum on a project after awhile – unless I have a deadline.

I know why these current projects are stalling. They are all things that I need to concentrate on. No mind-wandering allowed! No reading or even listening to anything that needs to be followed closely. I can work in silence or leave the radio on or put on one of the more “babbling” type of podcasts. It needs to be something I can tune in and out and not mind if I miss something. This level of concentration is only comfortable for an hour or two before I need a break. So it takes a very long time to finish anything. And with 3 or 4 of this type of project going at once it takes even longer. I know I profess to be a process-oriented person, but sometimes I need an end. Before it gets stale.

On top of the crafty molasses sticking to me, I’ve got to get started on some cleaning and organising that I’ve been promising since last spring. Then it was much too hot. Now it’s not. But it’s rather too humid for painting. Luckily I have lots of sorting and stuff to do before I can think about painting anything. As long as I have good lighting it doesn’t matter if it’s cold and wet and dark. That’s our usual winter around here and I really don’t mind it.

ETA:  I wrote this complete post yesterday and then forgot to actually post it. Instead of rewriting it to get my tenses straight, I thought I would just publish it a day late. I plead that I got sidetracked by cute small children!