Frenzied Daddy

I think I hate March.

March is the tail end of winter, and it is usually cold and wet. It’s the end of the dark days and you’d think with the equinox, that we’d be happier about the days being longer than the nights. But it’s cold, wet and Eugene had six inches of snow. It having been so dark and gloomy, inspiration for creating new things and building up on old things is at a low point. It’s hard to go into work, hard to talk to clients, even hard to pay bills.

On the plus side, I saw daffodils in the side yard this weekend. The dog seems to be feeling better. The kids are definitely feeling better; they’ve had colds for a few days and Miss B even had a fever.

A few months ago, running in the rain was a badge of courage. Today, it’s a badge of insanity. It’s cold, wet, and the raindrops are little frozen needles banging you in the face.

Spring break is next week, and I hope they find something fun to do. Any suggestions?

Well, that was a mistake.

I’m pretty lax on “card security.” I order a lot of things online and I use my debit card in lots of places. I suppose that’s going to have to change; I went to balance my checkbook today and found $250 in fraudulent charges originating in Canada.

I’ve never even been to Montreal!

After a ten minute stress-filled call to Keybank, the card’s been cancelled, the charges have been disputed (and the phone operator was very helpful about specifying which charges I disputed. Guy, seriously, anything in Canada? It’s fraud!). I have to file a police report. And in 10 business days or so, I’ll “probably” get my money back. They even denied one $250 charge, although I’m not sure why Key let the others through.

I’m not sure where the numbers leaked. It’s possible, though unlikely, that whomever stole the numbers also stole other personal info and opened an account somewhere else. I have to contact the credit report places and put an alert of some sort on that thing too.

What a pain in the patootie. But it could have been much worse.

This Comic has me dwelling on a mistake I made. One of many, but I’m learning from them.

About a year and a half ago, I managed to get a US Bank account overdrawn to the tune of about $1000. Yeah, I was impressed too. It was my business account for Argh WebWorks. I went in to the branch where I had opened it in order to talk to someone about how to close it and pay it off. I didn’t get the “small business specialist’s” name but his advice was simple. “Ignore it,” he said, “and it will go through internal collections, they’ll knock a bunch of fees and then send you a bill for the remainder. I asked him how much I could expect to wind up paying; he said he didn’t know. I asked him why not just hook me up as if it were a $1000 loan, and I’d make monthly payments. He said he was trying to save me money and that they had no mechanism for that sort of thing. He couldn’t give me a number for “internal collections.” Nothing.

It wouldn’t stand up anywhere- “I went into the branch and they told me to let it go through collections. No, your honor, I don’t remember the guy’s name. No, I don’t have a record of our conversation. No, he didn’t promise anything.” Yeah, that’d go really well. And I can’t deny that I owed them the money, obviously I wrote some bad checks and then fees compounded on fees and one nasty situation rolled into another one. I just wanted to shine the light of the sun on it so the mold couldn’t grow any further. The mold stopped growing on it when I told them to close the account.

So, now it’s a year and a half later, and I’ve finally made the last payment on it. It was still about $1000. Nothing was taken off, not that I believed that would happen. “Internal US Bank Collections” didn’t even bother sending me a bill, they just sold it to a collection agency. The collection agency promises that they’ll have the CheckPoint systems block taken off my records so I can open up a new account (at the credit union, thank you for asking). I’ll be checking later this week.

So yeah, don’t hire lawyers that are barred from courtrooms and don’t listen to Small Business Consultants who can’t help you.

Why yes, I am a little bitter. But not enough to claim it’s not my fault.

Those of you who see me on Facebook have already read about this.

Miss K lost her tooth yesterday. This was not a surprise. Not to me, not to her mother, anyway. It came as a total shock to the kiddo herself though. Back when the girls had a dentist appointment, the dentist said she had a couple of loose teeth and that she could, if she worked at it, lose her teeth before Christmas. That was more than two weeks ago.

Last night, she asked for an apple, but had to stop because it hurt to chew. Then she put her fingers in her mouth … and withdrew a tooth! One of the two in the front, on the bottom. There was a little blood and a little pain, but she wasn’t really upset about that– she was upset that her tooth had come out of her body! Miss K had always expected her teeth to be there for her, and now this one rebel was going to let her down.

Soon though, she was happy. We’ve all lost teeth, even the neighbor kids (K, H, and E). We got through those and we’ll get through this. And it shows she’s growing up. And, I bet her teacher will be so pleased for her. Eventually, her mother got her mood turned around, and the sun came out from behind the clouds of toothlessness. It turns out her bus driver was happy for her too!

The good news is that the tooth fairy came by and left a gold dollar coin for her tooth. The bad news is that she’s already stuck her tongue in the tooth hole, so the tooth will not be growing in gold.

I missed the Watchmen boat the first time around.

Sure, sure, I heard that it’s a complex story. A rich story. And my favorite superheroes have problems (my favorite superhero is Spiderman, my least, Superman) ; these Watchmen heroes have problems. And I enjoy discussing good, evil, and the variations in between. Just somehow, missed the boat. I think I avoided the Watchmen because it was fairly popular, and I try to avoid stuff that’s popular. Sometimes. I’ve mellowed about that as I’ve gotten older.

So I asked Ms B to reserve it at the library. And now I’m reading it. And oooh boy, I see why people rave about it. It’s got that quality in a good book where I’m thinking about some of the themes presented in the book. Some of the artwork has been outstanding, but the real star is the story. I don’t recommend it for kids or for other people sensitive to violence in their stories. There’s a lot of violence; even more than most comic books.

However, as our world has increasing violence, the US in Iraq and Afghanistan, the generations-long war in the Middle East, North Korea announcing they have nuclear grade plutonium, you know the stories. The questions raised in the Watchmen about how to bring peace to our world and if it’s worth it still apply, even though it’s set in 1985 with the cold war.

Some spoilers below:
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I was reading a message board and came across a suggestion that I may have to implement next Christmas. This one woman puts random numbers onto presents to thwart present shakers and counters. There’s no Christmas tradition I hate more than counting presents.

I don’t really know why. It mildly annoyed me when I first met the Divine Ms B and we traveled to her family’s house for the traditional yule, and her sisters participated in this ritual. They had a blackboard with their names and tally marks for the numbers under the tree. Well, no, but we worked hard to make sure they had the same number of presents and close to the same amount spent. As they’ve gotten older we’ve had to worry less about this, thankfully.

However, I caught the DQ making stacks yesterday. Yes, the DQ that reads this blog; she’s sure to read this too. I don’t even know the numbers, but it looked like “Five for the TT, four for the DQ.” I think she’s just having fun, but I hate feeling like one of the girls going to feel like we love her less because she has fewer presents. Maybe I’ll open a pack of dominoes and wrap each one separately. Hmm; I’ll have to buy some dominoes…

– god.

What is with you people? Isn’t it enough that Incomprehensible Twit Palin has a chance to be the President of the US in the next four years? Isn’t it enough that Bush has given himself the authority to delay the elections? Isn’t it enough that for the first time ever, an active army unit has been assigned to “Army North” in order to support homeland security measures? Isn’t it enough that the Republican “maverick” has voted with Bush’s policies 95 percent of the time?

This past week, thousands of copies of the anti-Muslim propaganda piece Obsession was spread throughout Ohio ( a swing state ) through newspapers and through the mail. Friday night, while 300 Muslims were in church celebrating the end of Ramadan, some (expletive deleted) sprayed a hand held canister of “chemical irritant” into the room where babies and children were playing and waiting for their parents. Someone tear gassed their daycare!

McCain’s supporters were distributing the DVDs; a group called the “Clarion” group. Well, I have a clear, bugle call to the “Clarion” group- your DVD has encouraged terrorism by Americans against Americans. I hope that McCain denounces you and that you lose any support you might have gained.

Tear gassing toddlers! I’m astounded!

Something’s not working. This feels as bad as when I left cowboyz.

Obviously I’m not making the right decisions. The decisions to leave cowboyz and get counseling were prompted by my realization that I wasn’t making the right decisions and to listen to other people’s suggestions or encouragements.

This is an open statement to the universe. Tell me what I’m doing wrong. Please.

I rode my bike for a long time- it was my only form of travel besides my feet and the bus until shortly before the DQ was born. When I drive, I try to respect the boundaries of bikers. I give them plenty of room, check for bikes behind me when I open my door.

There was a seriously aggravating biker lady on 21st yesterday, headed south, near the overpass over I-84. The first thing I noticed was that she couldn’t bike a straight line, so the cars, and we’re talking morning rush hour traffic, the cars couldn’t depend on her staying out of their lane. They had to pass her gingerly. The second thing I noticed was that her helmet was in the basket over the rear wheel. Not on her head. I guess there was something fragile in the basket that was worth more than her brains– not that she was using those! She swerved into traffic a few cars ahead of me to pass another biker. Yeah, not one much for single file. She didn’t signal for that, or when she swerved back into the “bike lane.”

And she ran red lights.

I didn’t have to pass her- she turned left and went up Stark or Oak or something. And she finally used her signals.

Geez.