Closure...not quite.

Today I am faced with a big dilemma.

This morning at 5 am I logged into Yahoo Messenger primarily out of habit to see if she - the woman - would be online, since this is one of the times we regularly talked. While I was online I decided to check my email. Bingo. A read receipt from her today telling me that she had seen the panic message I emailed to her Sunday night was read. More on that at the end of the post.

I must have been logged into the program for all of 10 minutes when I hear the knocking sound that signals when one of the people on your friends list has logged in. Sure enough it was her. What should I do?? Ignore her or talk to her? What did I do?

Curiosity, shall we say, got the better of me. I decided to talk to her if only to find out why she blew me off last Sunday. I did this in part to hear her side of the story and two because I was surprised to see her back online so soon.

This is what she told me: She said that she had problems at the airport in Moscow and still wanted to come and see me. Great, now what do I do? What do I tell her?

Despite what I have been telling myself the last few days, I tell her that she is welcome to try again. That I would love to actually see her, but that I can not help her (read: send her money). She tells me that is fine and that she will bring with her all of the money I had sent her previously. She even offered to send me back the money tonight, via Western Union. Should I have taken her up on that option? Maybe. But if I did, she said that would rule out any possibility of her coming.

Now I know you are saying, WHAT!?!?!? You sent her money? Yes I did. How much is not important to this story.

I suppose in the back of my mind I was thinking that would be a good thing to be repaid, since I have put myself in precarious financial position recently, and the money she would bring would help get me out of a bind. I'm also remembering what the pictures she sent me look like and how attractive she is supposed to be.

It is part of my personality and nature to want to give people the benefit of the doubt or a second chance, no matter how many times I may get burned. Yes, I know what I wrote in the last entry about her credibility being at zero, but deep, deep, deep, deep, deep (I could add more deeps but you get the point) down in my heart I want her to come. If it had been longer than two days and we spoke, perhaps my resolve would be greater, but it is not. I may be a sucker, but I need to take this chance.

It is this question that compels me to give her the benefit of doubt: Would a scammer even make the offer to return money sent to them in the first place? Logically you would have to say no, probably not. But an honest person would make that offer. And she has made this offer on multiple occasions.

So the main issue now under consideration is when will she be able to come? She must fly SVO to JFK. SVO to BOS simply isn't available as far as I could find. This time I told her that when she buys the airline tickets she should go from LGA to MHT. MHT is the airport code for Manchester, New Hampshire. Heck of a lot closer to me, much less hassle than Logan and parking isn't nearly as expensive there. It's actually quite a nice little airport.

Getting back to the point at the top about the read receipt email I received from her today. I had wondered if she had actually flown to New York last Sunday and decided it would be more fun to explore NY then fly on to Boston. Apparently it was true that she didn't make either flight. I looked up the IP addresses that this email bounced off of and sure enough it originated in the Russian Federation, in the vicinity of where Moscow should be. Keep in mind that the map you can choose to see on this particular web site is a satellite picture without city or country designations.