mamajoan

Wow, has it really been ten days since I last posted? And my auto-twitter-reposts are broken again? That's unfortunate, because I've been tweeting up a storm. Um, so to speak.

Anyway, I haven't been posting because, um, stuff? has been happening? you know? like, life? I dunno.

Did I post that I was in a minor car accident the Friday before last? It was totally annoying. I have spoken to the insurance company, who took down my version of events and said they will let me know whether I'm found at fault. If I am, you bet your ass I'll be appealing that shit. I can't believe that the jerk who hit me even bothered to call the insurance. I can't possibly imagine that his car sustained more than the deductible's worth of damage. But what-the-fuck-ever.

Then my car got dinged again today, in the SAME SPOT, by a guy at Isaac's afterschool! He was backing up their van, and it was dark and rainy, and I was standing on the sidewalk thinking "well, he's going to stop...he's going to...AUGH STOP!" and he, well, didn't. Not in time. It was just a little dent in the fender so I was like WHATEVER I JUST WANT TO GO THE HELL HOME and he was like "I'm going to talk to my boss" and I fled.

Apparently, while I was helplessly watching him back into my car, I yelled "Don't bash my car!" because Ruthie said about a thousand times on the way home "he bashed your car!" Oy.

Thanksgiving! I didn't post about it. Um, it was what it usually is. Family, food. Kids misbehaving and not eating barely anything. I think Ruthie had three bowls of ice cream. Over the weekend we had a playdate and went to the zoo and saw "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs." It was cute.

The kids play together so much lately. It is awesome. Except for when it makes us all late to bed because I can't manage to untangle them long enough to get pajama'd and so forth.

That'll have to be enough for now because I'm beat.

Another thing I didn't get a chance to post about recently is an issue I had at Ruthie's daycare regarding their summer program. ( this got kinda long. and also ridiculous. the brief summary: director of the daycare center is an idiot. )

I do so wish there were another good option. Never mind the issues I've had with the center, but even aside from that, once Isaac starts school and my office moves, Ruthie's current daycare is going to become a very inconvenient location. If only there were a daycare somewhere along the route from Isaac's school to my new office, that would be so perfect...but alas, as far as I can tell, there ain't. And the only daycare center in the vicinity of my new office, as far as I've found, is way more expensive even than the current one, so uh, no. alas.

I am irritated at Wells Fargo right now.

My mom suggested that I look into refinancing my mortgage since the interest rates are (or were, until today) on the low side. So last night I went to the Wells Fargo website to check it out. They hold my mortgage currently so I thought it would make sense to start there.

Well, their website clearly said that you can call about refinancing up until 11pm, which I thought was great. I can't make personal calls at work (zero privacy in the office) and at night it's very difficult -- I tend to get five- or ten-minute windows of time, so I try to make my calls then, and I get tetchy if people want to call *me* during the evenings because I can't predict when my window will be.

So I called. And after punching in all my info, I get routed to an answering-service lady who says she will take my info and have someone call me back. Well, as I just said, that's not what I want. I want to talk to someone when I call, because when I call is when I can talk! I explained this to the lady, not terribly patiently, and she of course said nothing much because what could she do? She did say that she could make a notation in the file saying what time to call me. So, okay, begrudgingly I asked her to put in that they should call me after 6pm.

You won't be too surprised, I guess, to learn that at 4:45 a guy from the Boston office of Wells Fargo left me a message saying "gee, I see here on your message that I should call you after 6pm, but I can't do that, so here's my number if you want to call me."

Grrr!!!!!! Why does the fricking website say that you can call until 11pm if you can't actually get a person on the line at that time?! Argh. I am pissed.

By contrast, today I filled out an online form at Countrywide Mortgage saying that I was interested in refinancing, and I said to call after 6pm, and the guy from Countrywide called at 6:10. And after talking to me for about thirty seconds (long enough to find out what my current rate is and what I'm looking for in a refi), he cut to the chase and told me that refinancing is not going to be worthwhile for me right now, because the rates aren't enough lower than my current rate. I liked that he didn't try to bullshit me or sell me something regardless. He offered to put me on a list to get an email if/when the rates go down again, so I said yes, and then he bid me goodnight.

So, from my albeit brief experience, Countrywide gets a big thumbs-up. And Wells-Fargo can bite my shiny white ass. :P

Another irritating and frustrating conversation with an ING Direct staffperson, named Susan (for my reference). The long and the short of it is, she claims that the account will never be opened if I do not accept the terms and conditions. To do this, I would need to use my PIN (which is on its way to me via snailmail now) to log on to the website and click an "accept" button somewhere. If I don't do that within 45 days, the application times out, and although they keep all my personal information on file, nothing will happen. I won't have an account with ING Direct (although I will have a "customer number") and all will be peachy. Well, except for them having my personal info, but whatevs.

The irritating and frustrating part is that although I just summed it all up in three sentences, it was like pulling teeth to get all that info out of "Susan." It was ridiculous. It was almost like she deliberately chose the make-you-feel-stupid approach (you don't know that we're mailing you a PIN? How big of an idiot are you?) over the give-customer-the-info-she-needs approach. Has no one taught these people basic customer-service skills? Well, clearly not, because Susan, like all her predecessors, did not say anything resembling "I'm sorry about all this" or "I'm sorry you've decided not to open the account" or the like. Perhaps she, and all of ING Direct, is thinking of me: good riddance. In which case, the feeling is quite definitely mutual.

Anyway, I emailed my Wainwright Bank account info to the HR folks here at the office and asked them to transfer my direct-deposit to it tout-de-suite. Haven't gotten around to opening a Wainwright savings account yet, but no rush. I did stop into the Davis Square branch this morning to write myself a check from the old account and deposit it into the Wainwright account. The Wainwright branch is fairly cushy. It has a real working fireplace, free wifi, and free coffee, tea, and donuts for customers (and, apparently, for passing-by homeless people. He gave me a suspicious look like he thought I might object to him taking a Munchkin. Whatever, dude. It's not my problem. Have a Munchkin for all I care).

heh, but I digress. Anyway, now to go cancel anything that might be trying to automatically debit from my NetBank account. I think that's just my student loan, but better make sure. whee.

There was an article in today's Globe about kids who are Red Sox fans and whether their parents are letting them stay up for the games. In case I haven't mentioned, it really irks me that the damn games all start at 8:30pm. ( A rant about the timing of games and the statement from a FOX network representative in the aforementioned article that pissed me off. )

In cheerier news, check out this awesome Sox-related parody of Dr. Seuss's "Fox in Socks." Hilarious.

Well, the Red Sox game last night was pretty much teh awesome. It had a little of everything: two very popular players returning for the first time after lengthy absences due to injury; some big hits, some big mistakes by the opposing team (incl. a fielder dropping an easy pop-up, and a pitcher walking four batters in a row); a pair of brothers facing each other for the first time (one as a pitcher, the other as a batter); and of course, the enormous roar of delight from the crowd when the left-field scoreboard showed us that Tampa Bay had come back from a 5-0 deficit to lead the Yankees 6-5. (Aside from the awesomeness of that moment itself, it was also pretty funny to see the Red Sox pitcher on the mound whirling around from side to side in confusion, wondering why the crowd had suddenly burst into cheers in between pitches.) And of course, the Sox won the game, and the Yankees lost their game, so the Sox's magic number is down to 3 and things are getting pretty exciting here in almost-the-playoffs land.

The biggest downside of the game was the people sitting behind us: four overly beered-up men in their 40s ( on whom I shall now waste far more words than necessary. To sum up: they were obnoxious. )

After the game was over and most people had left and we were gathering up our stuff to leave, I saw something fall from the upper deck of seats and land a few rows ahead of me. I thought it was a baseball, so I ran after it. It turned out to be a cellphone. I looked up and saw a woman waving at me; she signaled that she'd meet me down below on the lower level, so mom and I went there and looked for her, but couldn't find her. I eventually turned the phone in at the service desk. I hope she got it back. (Funny: When I picked it up, I said "oh, I thought it was a ball," and my mom thought I said "I thought it was a bomb." So she was like, "you thought it was a bomb, and you ran TOWARD it?" LOL! Not likely!)

Alas, as much fun as the game was, I'm not sure it was worth getting home at 11:30 and getting to bed at midnight...especially since Ruthie woke me up at 2:30 and then again at 6:15. siiiiigh. And today appears to be a really bad allergy day, after a couple of not-so-bad-at-all days in a row lulled me into a false sense of security. ARGH. Why is there no antihistamine that works??

Um, but to sum up: fun game. w00t.

Later, a post about how many things are going on this weekend and next, and how I continue to not be multiple people so shall have to decide which ones to skip. :(

Mom just came and took the kids away, and I have a ton to do before we leave for our trip. I probably will not post again for a bit -- not sure whether we'll have teh internets in Vermont.

But before I go, lemme just weigh in on the news that LJ is deleting/suspending user accounts again -- the apparent crime being drawing naughty pictures of HP characters. You can see at least one of the offending images, which one of the deleted users has posted on her GreatestJournal, here.

You'll also notice that LJ has quietly changed their code such that deleted accounts, when you use the "lj user=" tag, no longer show up with the little head icon and a line through the name. Now they show up merely in boldface, like so: ponderosa121 Is this LJ's way of trying to smack people down for using the moniker "Strikethrough 07" to refer to the last round of deletions? Not cool. Seriously, now it's like they're just TRYING to make large swathes of fandom leave.

I'm not even a Harry Potter fan, AT ALL, as many of you know. And yet...if anyone would care to point me in the direction of those tools that let you download/export your entire LJ? I'm going to give serious consideration to abandoning ship. This shit is just not okay.

Gotta go pack now. Laters.

Headline on boston.com right now reads: "Survey: Half of N.H. women victims of sexual or physical assault"
The subheader reads: "The report added that one-fifth of New Hampshire's females admitted to having been raped. (AP)"

"Admitted"??? What is this, the nineteenth fucking century? Isn't that kind of language beyond the pale yet?? "Admitted" like there's something shameful that a woman has to confess? "Admitted" like she has committed a crime rather than been the victim thereof?

For shame, headline writers. Back to the back of the class. Word choice matters, and you picked the wrong one. You fail at objective journalism and you fail at basic human decency.

This morning as I walked through Harvard Square, I was given a free copy of today's Boston Globe. It was part of a promotion to let people know that there's a new Qdoba restaurant in the Square, which opened today. I don't know much about Qdoba except that they make Mexican food and sandykidd is apparently a big fan.

Anyway, so they had taken today's Globe and folded an extra sheet of paper over it, mocked up to look like the front page of the Globe, but instead of actual news stories it had a press release/advertisement for the new Qdoba. And just skimming over it in the last two minutes of my walk to the office, I found at least six errors. :P Some of them were basic, stupid typos of the "should have run a spellcheck" variety ("coummunity", "suport") whereas others were more subtle grammar/punctuation issues (like a quotation without a close-quote at the end). Lame.

Yeesh, if they were going to spend all that money on getting the Globes, putting together this faux front page, hiring people to hand them out, etc., why not spend the extra $30 for an hour of a copyeditor's time? Come on, people.

Also, below the fold there are a couple of other "articles" about Qdoba's activities in the community -- and those are even worse. I couldn't even get beyond the first paragraph of any of them. I think Qdoba owes me a free burrito or something, for the pain they've caused me. ;)

Oh, speaking of which, after I managed to wrench my bleeding eyes past the text, I found a coupon at the bottom of the page -- buy one entree, get one free. Awesome. I sense a burrito in my future. And I don't even like burritos! :)

( An issue at Isaac's preschool that has me stewing ) Yeesh.