~:: Oh, Drat and Phooey ::~

Last week, I was going to try to sit down and write a blog apologizing for long silence.  It struck me then that I wasn’t alone; there weren’t a lot of my near-and-dear penning cheery notes for the rest of us.  But I didn’t write it then, and now everybody else has written, and I still haven’t.  I’m afraid the only reason why I am able to write now is the miserable, niggling cold (read: a miswabl cohwd) I’ve caught.  It came from G.  Who got it from Andy and Scooter. Who evidently got it from Cam.  Or he got it from one of them and then—well, okay.  Whatever.  I’ve got it.

Still no new pictures.  Still the old ones – from greener, warmer times.  Hope I’m not repeating myself.

The truth is, I still have been doing nothing but InDesign and photobooks.  I get up in the morning, do the usual routine, sit down to do the projects, look up at the clock in surprise and then go to bed.  No, not true.  Don’t tell the more virtuous among you, but I (blown out with learning and making tiny aesthetic decisions all day) watch some TV at night, knitting small things very slowly.  Then I go to bed.  And maybe I sleep.  Or maybe I simply lie there going back through my past life, or anticipating the future, identifying all global problems and trying to solve them.

Which doesn’t leave much room for writing.  The last couple of weeks, also, I’ve been reading (as I have probably said more times than anyone on the planet needs to hear) Breaking Rank and editing it and setting it up for ebook.  Which is nearly finished.  I just have to make up some very intellectual discussion questions to stick at the end, since that seems to be de rigueur these days if you want book clubs and teachers to buy your book.  Which they won’t anyway, because they don’t buy ebooks.  I know this from experience.

And I am still taking no pictures.  Though I tried to this week.  Really, I did.

I even have a hastily (if I were British, that would be AN hastily) scribbled down list of the rare flashes of philosophy that have erupted from under the rest of this.  I had to write them down or they’d be swallowed in Photoshop concerns and novel edits.  They prove that I’m still able to think.  I think about quite often—all  kinds of things.  I will admit that I’m avoiding politics.  Except for this very funny clip which Chaz sent me – which is only about politics because of this stupid election.

I will tell you this short but stupid story: last week, I decided it was the better part of valor to reconcile all my accounts—home, biz, etc.  Since I hadn’t for weeks.  And it’s good I did: first, I found that they had charged my account twice for the same check. I have to explain here that when I buy checks (in the echoing past, the last time), I don’t start over with the  numbering and haven’t for decades, which means that my check numbers are up into the 45000 range.  I am old, remember.  The credit union, however, only uses the last four digits, usually, to identify my checks. The first check was simple—last four digits, and you could click on the and up comes a nice image of the check.  Perfect.

But the second one, in the line right after the first one, had FIVE digits.  And no image would come up.  So I called them.  Understand that this credit union has been guarding my money since about 1976 and I’ve had no reason to complain, so all this stuff is really unusual.  I talked to the phone teller, explained the situation—then off he went to research the situation, leaving me on hold for about twenty minutes.

The explanation: it seems that a check came in at the same time as mine—from somebody else’s account—that had almost the exact same check numbers (plus one) as my check.  It also happen to have been written for EXACTLY the same amount of money and had a routing number that was EXACTLY the same as my account except for one digit, which had evidently been partially scraped off.  So that it looked like EXACTLY the same number in the same position on my checks.  So they figured I had written two identical checks, and that I had capriciously found some total stranger to sign the dang thing (not to mention the printed name and address in the upper left-hand corner.

So he fixed that.

Gin took this, which is why it looks so good.

I hung up.

Then I found another mistake: you know how, if you pay your Visa total in full for a month before the 25^th or so of the next month, they don’t charge you interest?  Yeah, well I always do that.  I never pay interest (unless I get a terrible cold that makes me really stupid, and I forget what day it is, which happens whether I have a cold or not.  But suddenly—here they were, charging me interest on my Visa.  And I was pretty darned sure I had paid it off as per above.  Unless I’m finally getting Alzheimer’s.  The thought of which freaked me out a little.

So I went back through my account for three months, and sure enough, I’d paid it the way I’ve been paying it for more years than most of their tellers have been alive.  So?  Why were they charging me?

Another call.

I was hoping to get the same nice guy.  But I didn’t.  I got some girl.  They use students a lot, which observation is really not apropos of anything.  But this girl; some people have lovely phone personalities.  Some—do not.  She sounded like a traffic cop.  Ma’am.

I usually try to get a customer service person laughing early on.  I like it when this kind of call feels at least a little like two humans talking to each other.  But she was a tough house.  I explained the whole situation to her carefully: charges, paid off the end of the month amount WAY before the deadline.

“Ma’am,” she said.  “Did you check the balance on your statement?”

I explained that I do not get statements.  I bank on-line.

“You have to use your statement,” she said.  “You can’t just use the computer balance.”

I explained that for DECADES I have called up my transactions, located the balance on the last day of the month, paid it and lived a happy life.

“You can’t do that, ma’am.  You need to check your statement.  Just find e-statements in your personal branch menu and pay the amount indicated.”

“But I CAN use the computer ledger.  Because I HAVE used the computer ledger without one single problem – for FIVE HUNDRED YEARS.”

“I’m sorry ma’am, but you do need to check your statement.”

And then I requested, very civilly (for which I get many, many points), that I might be transferred to someone who might understand better what I was talking about.

“I understand perfectly what you are talking about,” she said stiffly.  “But I am willing to transfer you to a supervisor.”  Her tone at this point suggested that I was about to be sent to the principle’s office.  And it almost worked on me.  But I sat up straight in my special leaning-forward computer chair and said, “Transfer away, please!”

Thankfully, the very helpful and charming Lindsey, someone who has evidently worked at the credit union for more than two weeks, figured it out. This one also took twenty minutes.  And what had happened?  Well, it turns out that the cut-off for “received” charges on any given day are figured differently by the Visa company and the credit union by about one hour.  If a charge comes in at four thirty, the credit union records it as coming in the next day, but Visa records it as coming in that very day.  The ledger on line reports the credit union date.  But the Visa balance will include any charges than sneak in under the wire.

“But this is a rare problem,” she said.  “In my seven years here, I’ve only seen this happen three or four times.”

Of course, it would be me.

She fixed it.  And I am left thinking that it probably happens a lot more than she thinks – not that many people are OCD enough to be jumping on their end of month balance the way I do.

Still.

Why is it that when the rare and amazing things happen to me, they don’t have anything to do with me being picked to win a million dollars or having perfect teeth or that rare metabolism that lets you live on chocolate with no discernable down-side?

Anyway, I’d had a lot of stuff to do that day.  Yep.  Didn’t get it done.

Another Gin one.

So.  Long story with no point.  A lot of whining.

See?  They do hold still for me.

But you knew it wouldn’t last, didn’t you?

Excuse me now—I’ve gotta go open another box of Puffs.