I’m Not Dead, I Swear

I’ve been super busy lately. What’s new, right?

Also, I can’t believe I did it, but…

Tonight I passed out from shear exhaustion for a small nap around 8:00pm. I planned on sleeping about an hour and then waking up and hitting the books – again. Unfortunately, I overslept a bit, but the universe was looking out for me and sent an alarm to wake me up.

At exactly 9:18pm I was awoken by 4 loud pops. I was a bit startled, but thought it must be fireworks from the assholes who live behind me. However, it was odd enough and loud enough that I noted the exact time it happened incase the cops stopped by and someone was dead.

I’m psychic.

At 9:40 the doorbell rang. I opened the door to 5 cop cars outside my house and a cop asking if everyone in the house was alive and ok.

“Um, yeah – why?”

“Well Ma’am, it seems there were shots fired in your front yard and we need to ask you a few questions.”

Ok, wtf?! I HATE THIS NEIGHBORHOOD. It wasn’t just gunfire a few houses away, or gunfire in front of my house, it was gunfire IN MY FRONT YARD THAT IS FENCED IN.

After HOURS of the cops being here they finally packed up and left. (with no dead body and no real damage to anything other than a broken window in the neighbor’s house, was there a need for hours and hours of mulling around my yard? Tax dollars at work, I see.)  They found 4 shell casings in my yard and on the sidewalk in front of my house. That’s it.

1) Why would someone jump into my yard and shoot a gun? Presumably they shot away from the house towards the street because a bullet shattered the neighbor’s window. Why?!

2) Since there really wasn’t death/serious damage why would the cops stay for hours combing my yard for bullet casings? It just caused a bunch of the neighbors to congregate around my house gossiping about who wants to kill the neighbors.

3) I hate this neighborhood. For obvious reasons now. At least this validated my feelings.

4) May can’t come soon enough. Hopefully I’ll have a job by graduation so I can move the hell out of here.

Ok, I’m going to go try to get a few hours sleep before I have to be back on campus tomorrow morning. I just needed to write that out so I can look back in years and remember how far I’ve come. From the ghetto to the gated community, right? Oh, the perils of being born a white female in a middle class family, right? Ha!

Awesomeness.

These guys make me wanna play Nintendo…

Sooooooooo….

Remember that jackass I dated early last year? The one I was totally so head over heels in love with that I was stupid enough to believe his BS? (Oh wait, that’s every boy I’ve dated.) The one that WAS ENGAGED THE ENTIRE TIME I WAS DATING HIM. The one I contemplated telling his fiance all about us? (No matter how I phrase it, that sentence doesn’t make sense to me.)

Yeah, him.

He emailed me today and told me he was coming back to Colorado and wanted to see me. That he missed me. That he couldn’t stop thinking about me. That I was the most sincere, caring, kind, woman he’s ever been with and blah, blah, blah.

What. the. Fuck. Douchebag?!

Seriously? I hate boys. All of them.

I may be a sucker, but I am not that big of a sucker. Even if I were single I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of a reply. Do people really think others are that dumb?!

Anyway, I decided that it was enough and I would tell his wife about the whole thing, because I can only forgive and forget and mind my own business so much. So, I go cyber-stalking and find his myspace again (after an hour of trying to remember how I found it in the first place) and guess what – she’s divorcing him and it will be official by Thanksgiving.

Big surprise there, eh?

I feel bad. I feel like I could’ve saved this woman the heartbreak of being a Divorcée at 26. I could’ve saved her a ton of money, time, and effort by telling her before she was married to this jerk.

Is it wrong I want to be her friend?

Enjoy my insomnia with me.

Ok. done. At least done sharing.

I found this through Boing Boing and decided to take the plunge and see what a shitty 1939 housewife I’d make. I confirmed my suspicions and scored a whopping two. A two! That qualifies me as a very poor (failure) of a housewife. Good thing I have no desire to be one, right?

I love reading stuff like this – societal changes (and lack of them) is fascinating.

I’ve .pdf’d the photos if you’d like to pass the lovely booklet along to friends and family. I sent it to everyone I know, but I’m a weirdo.

I feel like I can’t even communicate at the moment. I’m running on less than 2.5 hours of sleep and it’s starting to take its toll. Ignore me, but don’t ignore the awesome wife test.

Also, there’s a husband version. I’m going to quiz my inappropriately, and barely legal, young lovah. Wonder if he’ll pass?

What’d you score? Please be a shitty housewife (or househusband) with me!

Earlier this month I made a few poor money decisions and I ended up being short for two bills that I completely forgot were being debited. Unfortunately, my bank, US Bank, is the shittiest bank on the planet. As you can see from the following excerpt from my account, the total for the original overdrafts was $24.17 more than I had in my account.

Now, I understand that there will be overdraft fees and that this was my fault completely. This is how banks stay in business and I am responsible to pay any fees associated with my mistake. However, I have been a customer of this bank for almost 10 years, and I will admit I have been overdrawn a few times before, but have ALWAYS paid the fees. This time was different and I knew I wouldn’t be able to pay them until the end of the month. I called the bank to ask for help, or a stay of execution if you will. No such luck, in fact, Sholanda was a complete cunt to me. As I do in stressful situations, I ignored it for awhile.

US Bank’s policy is to kick you while you’re down, so for every day your account is in the negative (from previous experience I know that even if it was fees that put you in the negative this still applies) they charge you $8.00.

What I didn’t know was that for every week your account stays negative, they charge you an additional $35.00 just for the fuck of it.

I contact the bank on several occasions, through email, by phone, and in person, hoping I would get a sympathetic person that would somehow let me work out a plan so that the $8.00 fee would stop accruing. No such luck. US Bank employees are cunts. All of them.

There was nothing I could do about the situation, I had no one who I could borrow the money from, so I was resigned to the fact that I’d have to pay whatever they charged me. Then, on Friday, I got a letter stating that my account was in the negative and they were going to send me to collections unless I paid immediately or set up a payment plan to get my account in good standing again. A payment plan they would work out with me cause they care about me.

A FUCKING PAYMENT PLAN THAT I HAD BEEN ASKING FOR A MONTH TO GET AND THAT EVERYONE CLAIMED DIDN’T EXIST.

I was beyond livid. As you can see while the fucking cunts I had talked to played ignorant about the whole ordeal, my account had accrued a fucking ridiculous amount of fees. Convenient? Yes.

So, for an original negative balance of $24.17, I ended up paying $402.00 in fees. FOUR HUNDRED AND TWO DOLLARS.

That’s 16.6 times the original amount, or 1663% interest for less than one month.

I’m all for personal responsibility, and I paid what I owed, but I think this is quite possibly the most disgustingly poor business practice I’ve ever come in contact with. I have 10 years of good standing with their company and it meant nothing. I was treated as if I was scum when asking for help, and I actually got an eye roll when I tried explaining the situation to the teller in person.

I’ve been trying really hard to just accept this as a learning experience, but I just can’t get over it. I know there’s nothing I can do, but at least I can warn as many people as possible to bank elsewhere.

* See how there are 3 overdraft fees, but only two actual items that were cleared? Well, apparently my account balance was pending from a deposit, so while the money was there, they didn’t want to count it just yet…

** See how that’s still pending? Conveniently, it will be pending until Monday. That way they can squeeze $16.00 more out of me with the negative balance fee for Saturday and Sunday. There is no possible way to deposit money on the weekend and it count until Monday – even when I go in person with cash and give it directly to a teller. Nice.

*** I was told by a cunty US Bank employee when I called that if I didn’t get my balance up to $16.00 to cover the negative balance fees I would be charged another $35.00 for going negative again. ‘I just wanted to let you know so I could save you some money.” Thanks lady, appreciate it.

It’s 3.14 today. If you’re a total geek, you already knew that, which is why I already knew that. If you’re normal, you probably a) don’t know what the fuck I’m talking about or b) know what I’m talking about and don’t think it’s as awesome or noteworthy as I do.

I think I’ve finally come to terms with the fact that I’m a geek.