Jessica exclaimed, “Oh, Foul, Randy! Did you fart over here?”
“No,” I said a little shocked by the accusation, since usually I did pass wind when I’ve been caught.
It turned out she smelled the ‘cheese’ flavored rice crackers I was eating. I don’t know that I want to eat these any more.
I really messed up this noon, Abby asked for a vitamin and I told her, “No, you need to eat some more cookie.”
My only defense is that I was trying to take my vitamins and I was trying to buy some time.
This is a sad day in the Peterman household 🙂
I just paid off my Honda Civic, which feels good. However, the process for doing so was uber-retarded. I went online to Chase.com and logged into my account by typing in my username 530… Hey, don’t try to trick me into giving away sensitive information! Anyway, I logged in, and clicked on the (finally present) ‘Pay off my car’ link. There I was presented with a really old address that I lived at over two years ago. I happened to live there when I bought the car 4 years ago. The instructions on the web site were to call an 800 number and change my address information to make the payoff.
So I called.
I did the rigamaroll of automated touch tone systems and then waited online with a 30 second loop telling me how important I was but that I’d have to wait my turn. I waited for not very long, which was nice. Then the gal on the other end of the line (which is a bad term since I was on my cell phone) asked for security reasons for me to confirm my address. I did. She told me that was wrong. I chuckled and thought, “Silly people have our old Ash lane address.” I was wrong. Turns out they have our old, old Ash lane address from when we first moved onto Ash lane (we moved downt he street later). The problem is that I haven’t used that address in years and so I had to look it up in my files. So I finally got her approval with the ancient address and then she wanted to change my address. Which I appreciate. Except that she then wanted to send me out new monthly payment coupons.
I explained again that I just wanted to pay off my car. She said I couldn’t do that over the phone, but I could do it online and via mail. The problem is that the mail system works poorly because if my envelope with check enclosed arrives one day late, they’ll charge me 43 cents for that day. Which means I could literally almost own my car. I could have a loan on my car for 43 cents and sit waiting, wondering what the heck was going on because the mail took a day too long. So I logged in (while on the phone) to my account again and got told by the server that their was an error!. There was an error all right! My car loan was through Chase-Manhatten. That was the error. Ford Credit, who handled my Stratus load, was outstanding. They were the best financial organization I’ve worked with as far as online information, telephone support and prompt handling of payments.
In the end, I let the chase.com site do its thing and finally it stopped having the error and I was able to initialize the payment. I’m hoping that the electricity doesn’t mess up my transaction and I can just breathe easier knowing I’m getting to a place where I can just have one huge payment per month for my house.
The other thing that irritated me is that I had called to change my address on the phone at Chase a long time ago (before I moved to CO) and then I’d changed it online with their ‘online address changing form.’ That apparently is not related to the ‘We have your account under a really old address’ database that they handle things with for the phone department. Why have the same set of information, related to the same account, related to the same customer, stored in many databases, not accessible to the different departments and not manageable by the customer on your online account editing page? Why do that? Because you can. Because you’ve got your customers locked into your system and they can’t do a thing about it. Nice, huh?
[Note: I can’t wait to hear Trint‘s story about what he had happen to him that makes my story seem like a graceful financial transaction.]
Arafat has died. I would say that this is an end of an era, but in truth this is probably just a gnarly transition from one extremist to another. It is like switching from an all bean diet to a beer, cabbage and egg diet. Basically, this stinks. Fortunately I’m sure we’ve got a crack intelligence team that has figured out most everything thing there is to know about the next leader (who should probably figure out where Osama Bin Laden is).
This evening our neighbors upstairs were at it again. And when I say ‘At it again’ I mean one male was screaming at absolutely the top of his lungs, “You stupid, [expletive deleted] piece of,” I interupt to point out that we were watching Master & Commander and the next word out of the neighbor’s mouth sounded similar to a synonym for ‘boat.’ It is at this point that I’d also like to clarify that stomping on the floor not more than 5 minutes earlier would have been appreciated because we were at the climactic battle scene towards the end of the movie. The part where the ship turns itself into a bug and surprises the snot out of a bunch of French folk. Cannon firing with surround sound turned on would have only been enhanced by the deep thunderous stomping of my neighbors upstairs. However, as is so common with them, their timing was off and the loud screaming of expletives was an inconvenience to us.
I’m hoping that they’ll either stop completely or do it again one third (and due to apartment policy, last) time so that we can move on with our lives. They’ve been a real hoot to have above us and I’ve learned a lot of things about being an upstairs neighbor from them. I’ve heard musical scales, river-dance like stomping in the bathroom and seen my daughter run out of my living room afraid. Oh, well. Next year we may try to buy a house anyway, which would mean that our neighbors would have to be really loud to get us this disturbed.
If you’re one of the many two year old blog readers that I have, Abby has revealed a new technique to help manipulate us into being spineless parents: telling us she’s crying. What happened this morning is that she pooped in her panties. This upset Jessica greatly, so she made her sit on the toilette to finish her business. Abby started wimpering and saying, “I’m crying.” This of course shut down all of our parental instincts and we caved in and gave her whatever she wanted.
OK, not really, but her telling us she was crying was an all time best for attempted mercy-begging.
This last weekend (Sunday the 31st) Clair and I went to a restaurant for lunch and were seated at a booth near two older ladies (older meaning they looked to be in their late 60’s to mid 70’s if I was to guess. They may have taken that as a complement). Clair got up to use the restroom and so with nothing else to do I listened to other conversations in the room. The two older ladies were very excited about ‘the bowling alley last week.’ I can assure you that there is no bowling alley in Kalama Washington. However, one of them was impressed with the food at the bowling alley. She leaned over to the other gal and said, “You know that was a big turkey sandwich! They had this much meat on it [makes about a 1.25 inch gap between thumb and forefinger (AKA nose picker)].” Her friend seemed equally impressed by the size of the sandwich.
I hope and pray that turkey sandwiches are not focal points of my life when I reach that age. I want to be excited about my grandkids, the fact they have a new Super-Duper Polygrip [you so have to click that link, it’s to a funny comic strip], and of course the latest on America’s Funniest Home Videos – Mashup Edition.
I have been amazed, amused and confused by various responses to Bush’s re-election this last week. My thoughts aside, which are pretty ho-hum, this Op-Ed article is quite fascinating.
I’m a generally conservative guy (but I’m not registered Republican, I’m ‘unaffiliated’ or some other non-sense term that means, “Please don’t pigeon hole me.”) and I’m not a closet Christian, but I’ve been flabbergasted that so many web sites and news blurbs cited ‘Evangelicals’ as the source of Bush’s win. For crying out loud, there are lots of states with a very small percentage of actual Christians (where Christian does not equal WASP) but where conservative values tend to be held. Heck, I left the Bible Belt to find a home church 🙂
What I’m most interested in is some reasons why I don’t think Kerry won:
This is a very small list and I know many more arguments were leveled during the time of the presidential running (or, if you want to be humorous, the running of the bulls [as in bull pucky that came out in the mud slinging]). My recommendation for those against Bush’s presidency is to not marry a Canadian, move to Canada or protest all over the place. Instead, move to California, they’ve got plenty of room (not really), join a cult (to counter the Evangelicals) or marry a Canadian so they can move down here and populate the country with Candadian ideas and accents (Pretty good idea, eh?).
I’m interested in intelligent conversation on this and would like to hear other arguments I didn’t list and see what else we can come up with. Also, what candidates do you prognosticate for the next presidential election? Powell verses H. Clinton? That would be quite the race because you’d have a black male verses a woman. Of course Arnold Schwartzeneiger verses Obama would be even more intense! OK, I’m going to bed.
I have been called a poop nazi this morning. This is a name that I take seriously given that I’m German in descent and I married a rather German woman. Therefore Abby is still a mutt, but she’s got a lot of German blood. The reason I’m a poop Nazi? Because I ask Abigail if she needs to go poop when her face falls into what I would call a blank poop stare. A blank poop stare is one in which her focus can be seen shifting to her bowels and the inner workings of her body. It is like she’s doing a system check to make sure everything is as it should be.
However, I ask more often than Abby needs to go, and so Jessica has called me this crappy name. Therefore, I christen her, the Moderate Mommy.
Abby is getting spoiled rotten by Grandma and her generosity with her money. I am amazed by the amount of stuff Abby has accumulated. Grandma should buy her a new suitcase to ship it all back in 😉
