hump day suck day recap

i had something else to write here, but i decided to change it…

…sue me, i need to vent.

(and who the fuck reads me on a friday, anyway? i should also mention the title implies this is a much more entertaining bit than it will probably end up for most of ya…)

so, i wake up wednesday and first thing i do is check my bank balance. this is not my typical wednesday fare, but thanks to us celebrating the wonderful world of dairy products (why did my calendar forget the vowel for “MILK day?”) all bank biz was delayed…

…or at least, money going IN to the account was delayed.

i had sold some things on eBay recently and what people who don’t sell on eBay don’t realize is it ain’t free. there are listing fees, and if the item sells there are “final value fees”, and so when last month closed out i got an invoice for around $20 which said “we will deduct this from your paypal account in NO LESS than ten days”. as there was an extra day to pay for (and i had forgotten about dairy day on monday) i was running EXTREMELY lean and actually put money in my account (cash) on sunday ‘caue i knew i would fall a few bucks short otherwise. even through in an extra ten spot to cushion shit. figured all was well.

not so much.

midnight wednesday (when cash would have been there, save for dairy day) a small charge ($3 for rockstar punch) that had been pending since friday was put through, but only AFTER they pushed through the brand new paypal charge for $20 which had said “no LESS than ten days” two weeks and some change ago, so i’d forgotten it was coming. thanks to how bank software is written the bigger charges, while newer, are put through first as they are seen as “more important” (mortgage, car payments, utility bills, all typically higher than your starbucks run) so these “more important” charges are covered and not returned (bouncing your mortgage payment can be bad – trust the voice of experience on this one).

but that’s all bullshit.

in reality the software is written for situations like mine – when you’re SO close to the line that you overdraft…if they had put the charges through in order of appearance, they’d only get ONE fee out of me. but thanks to how the software was written, they got two (it could have been MUCH worse – have a friends that was hit for thirteen once…and at $35 per, that sucked – $455 for all slow at math). so while i EXPECTED to hear a balance available of around eight bucks, instead i heard one of NEGATIVE $74 – and $66 of that was bank fees.

this was at 7:45am – the day is not looking sunny.

so from there i went in to plead my case at the bank (the phone bank people said they couldn’t do it). well the real bank people wouldn’t either, because it wasn’t a “bank error”. when i pointed out that is was the way THEIR software was written that caused the issue, they pointed out that because i was aware of how their software worked i should have known this was possible.

check out the big brain on sean…cost him $66 before 7am.

recently i got a new notebook (i’m not using it to type this) but it had the extended battery that hangs off the back, so i wanted the smaller one for toting it around. went to a place, bought what they SAID was the smaller one, but got home to realize it was the SAME SIZE as what i had. now i have to take it back, and they DON’T do refunds, only exchanges and store credit…so now it was 9:30, and i’d already sunk (between a bunk battery and bullshit bank charges) $150 i hadn’t planned on…so now sprint gets to wait for their money a bit.

(still won’t be late, but i was settling all my bills early this month)

i limped home with my tail between my legs (none of that meant literally), had a couple beers, and made lunch – figuring, “as long as i don’t leave the house again, things won’t get worse…”

dopey me.

about an hour after lunch i see i have an ebay message – thinking it was about some pc parts i was trying to get a better price on, i open it up only to find it was, instead, for the leather jacket i sold back at the beginning of december. against my better judgment i had to sold to a buyer outside the states (russia – where this site is EXTREMELY popular with spammers) and as a result she’d actually had to pay $43 dollars shipping versus the $20 i had on their (although, in reality, i had paid $48 ’cause i added a return receipt AND insurance…which appears now to be a very good call).

russian girl claims she hasn’t gotten it and is threatening to “revoke payment” (which would mean me paying back $200 with shipping). somehow i found the receipt, went to the post office, and had them track it. last scan they could see was late on january 3rd the package was cleared for delivery through russian customs in moscow – so i emailed her and told her so. haven’t seen a response yet, but have all my ducks in a row in case she tries to come after me on this.

after all that shit, i decided my day needed to close out “3-2-1, a-b-c” which is to say all of this had happened and it was only 3:21pm, so i went the “A-B-C” route (alcohol, bar-b-que, and cigars) and turned off the outside world for the rest of the day. this meant the latter half of the day was INFINITELY more pleasant…

…and so it ended. all that shit before 3:30 can make for a very unproductive rest of the day. in fact, the only productive thing that happened the whole rest of the day was i wrote this. it’s no 10:21pm, the bourbon/beer buz had faded, as has the minor cigar buzz, so now it’s sleepy time. to all a good night…